Ninian Edwards
Ninian Edwards was a founding political figure of the state of Illinois. He served as the only governor of the Illinois Territory from 1809 to 1818, as one of the first two United States Senators from Illinois from 1818 to 1824, and as the third Governor of Illinois from 1826 to 1830. In a time and place where personal coalitions were more influential than parties, Edwards led one of the two main factions in frontier Illinois politics.
Ninian Edwards was born in 1775 to the prominent Edwards family in Montgomery County, Maryland. His mother, Margaret Beall Edwards, was from another prominent local family. His father Benjamin Edwards served in the Maryland House of Delegates, in Marylands state ratifying convention for the U.S. Constitution, and in the United States House of Representatives, filling a vacant seat for two months. Ninian was educated by private tutors, one of whom was the future U.S. Attorney General William Wirt. He attended Dickinson College from 1790 to 1792 but did not graduate, leaving college to study law. His son Ninian Wirt Edwards wrote later that Edwards spent some of his time at Dickinson reading medicine, a field to which he devoted considerable time in his later years.
Source: Wikipedia