Class of 1792

Ninian Edwards was born in Montgomery County, Maryland on March 17, 1775 to Benjamin and Margaret Edwards, a well-connected political family. He attended Dickinson with the class of 1792 but left before the completion of his degree and took up the study of law.

In 1795 he was in Kentucky, managing family property there and entering state politics with immediate success. He was elected to the legislature before he was eligible to vote. In 1803, he was appointed to the bench and four years later became the chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

In 1809, James Madison appointed Edwards as the first governor of the newly-formed Illinois Territory. He served in the formative years of government for the territory, forming the political structure which would accompany statehood in 1818. He became the new state's senator in 1819. He resigned in 1824 upon his appointment by President Monroe as minister to Mexico; however, he was never able to assume the post due to a scandal stemming from a public argument with the current secretary of the Treasury. Edwards returned to Illinois where he was elected governor in 1826. His popularity waned and he did not seek re-election in 1830. His career ended with defeat in a run for Congress in 1832.

Isaac Wayne was born in 1772, the youngest of two children and the only son of Anthony and Mary Penrose Wayne of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Anthony Wayne was a distinguished Revolutionary War general who had served with Washington at Valley Forge and had contributed to the American victory at the Battle of Monmouth. Young Isaac was educated at the local common schools before graduating from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1792; he may have also attended Princeton for a short time prior to entering Dickinson. After graduation, Wayne studied law and was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1795.

Just as his father had served his country in the military, Isaac Wayne served as representative of the people. He was elected to the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1799 and served a two-year term; he was again elected in 1806. Four years later, he was elected a state senator. At the outbreak of war in 1812, Wayne helped to raise a cavalry troop from Chester and surrounding counties, and became a colonel in the Second Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. When the war ended, he returned to public life, though he ran unsuccessfully as the Federalist candidate for Pennsylvania governor in 1814. He returned to the family farm in Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Chester County to attend to his estate there.