James Thomas Edwards was born on January 6, 1838, in Barnegat, New Jersey, to Job and Susan Edwards. Her father was a minister who owned $4,900 of real estate and $3,900 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Barnegat, and he graduated from Wesleyan University in 1860. He spent the next two years teaching in New York and Rhode Island. He married Emma Baker on July 10, 1862, and they had at least three children: Grace, born around 1864; Laura, born around 1868; and Florence, born around 1876.

 

In October 1862, he received a commission as a 1^st lieutenant in Company K of the 11^th Rhode Island Infantry. The regiment helped defend Washington, D.C., and he resigned on March 26, 1863.

 

He settled in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, after leaving the army, and he worked as a school principal. He supported the Republican Party, and he served three terms as a state senator in the 1860s. According to an early biographer, he “took an active part in the discussion of the fifteenth amendment,” and delivered speeches on the “just limits of the pardoning power.” He served as a presidential elector in 1868.

 

He moved to Randolph, New York, around 1870, and he served as president of the Chamberlain Institute and Female College. In the early 1890s, he was elected to the New York state senate, and he served as chairman of the committees on education and railroads. He championed bills to fund public colleges and libraries, and he supported women’s right to vote for school commissioners. In 1893, he became principal of the McDonogh Institute near Baltimore, Maryland. He worked there for the next five years. He died in Randolph, New York, on August 20, 1914.

 

Image: James T. Edwards (courtesy Wikicommons)

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