Edmund Fanning was a British North American colonial administrator and military leader. Born in New York, he became a lawyer and politician in North Carolina in the 1760s. He first came to fame as the focus of hatred of the Regulators, and led antiRegulator militia in the War of the Regulation. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, he was driven from his home in New York, and joined the British Army, recruiting other Loyalists. He served during campaigns in New England and the South. At the end of the war in 1783 he became a United Empire Loyalist, settling in Nova Scotia.
Edmund Fanning was born in the Town of Southold on Long Island in the colony of New York to Captain James Fanning and Hannah Smith. Nova Scotia Governor John Parr believed Fanning was, like Parr, a Protestant Irishman, and was from Ulster and owned great estates there.
Source: Wikipedia