Born in 1779 at "
Wye House",
Talbot County, Maryland, he was a member of a prominent Eastern Shore family, "the Lloyds of Wye," which had lived in
Talbot County since the mid-17th century. His father
Edward Lloyd IV was a member of the
Continental Congress and his mother Elizabeth Tayloe was the daughter of
John Tayloe II of
Mount Airy. He received early education from private tutors. Lloyd served in the
Maryland House of Delegates from 1800 to 1805. He was elected to the Ninth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of
Joseph H. Nicholson and was reelected to the Tenth Congress, serving from December 3, 1806, to March 3, 1809. In 1808, Lloyd was elected as Governor of Maryland, a position he served in from 1809 to 1811. During this period Lloyd traded a
Merino ram for "Sailor," a male
Newfoundland that had a reputation for spectacularly enthusiastic
water dog retrieving of ducks. The dog was bred with other retrievers at Lloyd's estate on the eastern shore of
Chesapeake Bay. Sailor is now considered the "father" of the
Chesapeake Bay Retriever line. Lloyd was commissioned a lieutenant colonel of the Ninth Regiment of Maryland Militia and also served as a member of the
Maryland State Senate from 1811 to 1815. He was elected as a Democratic Republican (later Crawford Republican, then Jacksonian) to the United States Senate in 1819, was reelected in 1825, and served from March 4, 1819, until his resignation on January 14, 1826. In the Senate, Lloyd served as chairman of the
Committee on the District of Columbia (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses). Later in life, Lloyd served as member of the Maryland State Senate from 1826 to 1831, and as President of the Senate in 1826. He died in
Annapolis, Maryland, and is interred in the family burying ground at Wye House near
Easton, Maryland. ==Description by Frederick Douglass==