James L. Edwards was born in Petersburg, Virginia on May 25, 1786. A colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps during the War of 1812, he later worked as a clerk in the U.S. War Department, where he often worked on pensions cases. When the pension office was organized as its own department in 1833, he became the first Commissioner of Pensions, in which role he served until 1850. He died in Washington, D.C. on September 19, 1867.