Cadwallader Colden

Cadwallader Colden (7 February 1688 – 28 September 1776) was a physician, natural scientist, a lieutenant governor and acting Governor for the Province of New York. Early life Colden was born on 7 February 1688 in Ireland, of Scottish parents, while his mother Janet Hughes was visiting there. His father, Rev. Alexander Colden A.B. of Duns, Berwickshire, sent him to the Royal High School and Edinburgh University to become a minister. When he graduated in 1705, he continued his studies in medicine, anatomy, physics, chemistry, and botany in London. In 1710, his aunt Elizabeth Hill invited him to Philadelphia where he started his practice in medicine. He briefly returned to Scotland to marry Alice Chryste in 1715, and came back with her to Philadelphia that same year. In 1717, he was invited by Governor Robert Hunter to relocate to New York, and in 1720 he became a surveyor general of New York. Public life Colden entered political life in 1720, when Governor William Burnett chose him for provincial council. He served as lieutenant governor and as acting governor in 1760–1761, 1763–1765, 1769–1770, and 1774–1775. He was acting governor of New York from who resided inside Fort Amsterdam in1760 to 1762 (replaced by Robert Monckton in 1762) and again from 1763 to 1765, and from 1769 to 1770 after Henry Moore's death, by which time he was eighty years old. He was replaced by the Earl of Dunmore.