Sidney Edgerton

Sidney Edgerton (between 1860 and 1865)

Sidney Edgerton (born August 17, 1818 in Cazenovia , Madison County , New York , †  July 19, 1900 in Akron , Ohio ) was an American politician and from 1864 to 1865 the first governor of the Montana Territory .

Early years

Sidney Edgerton attended local schools in his home country and then the Lima Academy , where he later taught as a teacher for some time. In 1844 he moved to Ohio, where he taught at a school in Tallmadge . He then studied law at the Cincinnati Law School . After successfully passing his exams and admission to the bar, he practiced at Akron.

Political career

In 1848 he was a delegate at the founding convention of the short-lived Free Soil Party . He later joined the Republican Party founded in 1854 . Between 1852 and 1856, Edgerton was a Summit County prosecutor . In 1856 he was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia , at which John C. Frémont was nominated as a candidate for president. Between 1859 and 1863, Edgerton was a member of the US House of Representatives . There he experienced the outbreak of the civil war . In this war he took part at times as a colonel in the Union Army .

In 1863 he was appointed a federal judge in the Idaho Territory . It was then that he became one of the advocates for establishing their own Montana territory. Just one year later he was appointed the first territorial governor for this area. Edgerton held this position in the then capital Bannack for only one year.

After the end of his brief tenure in Montana, Edgerton returned to Akron, where he again worked as a lawyer. He died there on July 19, 1900. Since 1848 he was married to Mary Wright, with whom he had nine children. His wife died in 1885.

Web links

• Sidney Edgerton in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Sidney Edgerton in the database of Find a Grave (English)