Cadwallader Colden

Cadwallader Colden (1688 to 1776) was an Irish-born physician, scientist and colonial administrator who served as governor of New York from 1760 to 1762 and again from 1763 to 1765. Born in Ireland to Scottish parents while his mother was visiting there, he was sent by his father, the Reverend Alexander Colden, to the Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh to train as a minister. After graduating in 1705 he continued studies in medicine, anatomy, physics, chemistry and botany in London. In 1710 an aunt invited him to Philadelphia, where he began a medical practice, and in 1715 he returned briefly to Scotland to marry Alice Chryste. Governor Robert Hunter invited him to New York in 1717, and in 1720 he became surveyor general of the colony. He entered political life that year as a member of the provincial council and later served as lieutenant governor and acting governor several times. As the first colonial representative to the Iroquois Confederacy, he wrote The History of the Five Indian Nations in 1727, the first book on the subject.