Fanning, Edmund

DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: J. M. Bumsted, “FANNING, EDMUND,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/fanning_edmund_5E.html
DCB profile notes:
- Army officer, colonial administrator, and land agent; b. 24 April 1739 in that part of Southold Township, N.Y., which is now Riverhead, son of Captain James Fanning and Hannah Smith; d. 28 Feb. 1818 in London, England.
- By 1768 Fanning had become the chief symbol of corruption for the Regulation – an outburst of popular back-country opposition to seaboard domination – and the main target as well for the mob violence associated with it. His house was on several occasions set aflame, and in 1770 he was dragged through the streets of Hillsborough, a humiliation that contributed to Tryon’s forcible suppression of the Regulation in a pitched battle at Great Alamance Creek the following year.
- When Tryon was transferred to the governorship of New York in 1771, Fanning was more than pleased to abandon North Carolina and accompany his patron as private secretary. He subsequently served as surrogate of New York City from 1771 and provincial surveyor general from 1774.
- At the outbreak of the American rebellion Fanning received permission to raise and command a force of loyalists known as the King’s American Regiment or the Associated Refugees, which soon became notorious in the colonies for the ferocity of its fighting and cruel treatment of the enemy.
- After the war Fanning settled in Nova Scotia, where on 23 Sept. 1783 he was sworn in as lieutenant governor. Fanning gave up his Nova Scotia sinecure in 1786 to replace Walter Patterson as lieutenant governor of St John’s Island, surrendering his comfortable existence in Halifax for a “small, unfinished, comfortless, rented cottage” in Charlottetown. He regarded the appointment as an interim one until he would replace John Parr at the head of the Nova Scotia administration.
- Edmund Fanning has not received the same attention as some other loyalist governors of British North America, but he was perhaps the most successful of the breed. Alone among the early administrators of Prince Edward Island he emerged from the colony with his reputation intact. That he escaped untarnished was to a large extent the result of his careful, and ambiguous, stand on the land question.
United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=11545
Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/155391978/edmund-fanning