Edmund Fanning was born on24 April 1737 in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, the son of British army captain James Fanning and Hannah Smith and the great grandson of Edmund Fanning of Kilkenny, Ireland. He studied at Yale and by 1760 had moved to North Carolina where he studied law under Attorney General Robert Jones and held various local and provincial posts as well as being Colonel of the Orange County militia. In 1771 he moved back to New York with the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor William Tryon and in 1775 was appointed Surveyor General of the Province. With the outbreak of the Revolution he joined the British troops and raised the King's American Regiment of Foot which fought with distinction throughout the war. On 24 February 1783 Fanning was rewarded with the post of Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia which he held until 1786 when he was transferred to the Island of St. John which became Prince Edward Island in 1799. He remained Lieutenant-Governor until 1805 when he resigned. He did not leave the Island until 1813 when he settled in London. In 1785 at Point Pleasant, near Halifax he had married Phoebe Maria Burns. They had four children: Louisa Augusta (m. Sir Gabriel Wood) Frederick Augustus, Maria S. Matilda, and Margaret William Tryon (m. Cpt. Bentinck Harry Cumberland). Edmund Fanning died on 28 February 1818, survived by his wife and daughters. Fanning had held large tracts of land in Prince Edward Island and he and his daughters figure prominently in land transactions.