TYNG (Ting, Tynge), EDWARD, a member of the Council of Maine from 1678, commandant of Fort Loyal, Maine, 1681–82 and 1686–87, appointed governor of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.), 1691; b. 1649? in New England, son of Edward Tyng, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1636; d. 1691 or later.

Near Fort Loyal in Falmouth (Portland), on 23 July 1680, Capt. Edward Tyng was granted a lot of land. He was commander of Fort Loyal 1681–82, at a salary of £60 per annum for himself and servant. In 1684 he was appointed by the General Assembly of the province to a committee to take care of repairing Fort Loyal and settling a chief officer there. He was commissioned as a member of Joseph Dudley’s Council of New England on 13 Oct. 1685 and he took the oath of office when that council convened for the first time at Boston on 25 May 1686. A year later Capt. Tyng was again appointed to command Fort Loyal. On 10 Jan. 1687 he was appointed to the council of Sir Edmund Andros, governor of New England and New York, with whom he was a favourite. Capt. Tyng conducted negotiations with the Indians of Maine in 1688 and commanded a company of soldiers in the garrison at Pemaquid. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel in Sagadahoc the same year.

After the fall of Port-Royal in 1690, when Massachusetts claimed Acadia or Nova Scotia, Tyng was selected as its governor. He visited Port-Royal in 1691, in a vessel owned and commanded by John Nelson*, a Boston merchant and the chief heir of Sir Thomas Temple. But finding that the inhabitants would give him no guarantee against Indian attacks, he declined to remain. On the way back to Boston, Nelson’s vessel called at Saint John, where it was captured by a French frigate, Soleil d’Afrique, commanded by Simon-Pierre Denys* de Bonaventure. Joseph Robinau de Villebon, the new French governor of Acadia, was on board this ship. Tyng, Nelson, and young William Alden were held as hostages, while John Alden* took the ketch on parole to Boston with a letter to the governor requesting an exchange of prisoners. Satisfactory arrangements not being made, Tyng was subsequently sent to Quebec, to be transferred later to France, where he died in captivity at La Rochelle.

Tyng’s wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Ensign Thaddeus and Elizabeth (Mitton) Clarke. He had two sons and two daughters. In consequence of his father’s hardships and expenses, Tyng’s son Edward*, a distinguished Massachusetts naval officer, was granted a tract of land by the Province of Massachusetts-Bay in 1736.

C. Bruce Fergusson