Colonel Edmund Scarborough (September 1617 – 1671) was an English-born politician and military officer who served as speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1645 to 1646.

[1] His father, Captain Edmund Scarborough, was an army officer, barrister and graduate of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge who immigrated to the English colony of Virginia c. 1621.

[2] A brother, Sir Charles Scarborough, remained in England and studied medicine before becoming a noted mathematician who was a founding member of the Royal Society.

[3] On April 28, 1651, Scarborough led a raid of some fifty men, on a nearby Pocomoke village along the northern boundary of Accomac Shire, after convincing the settlers that the Indians planned to attack.

After the settlers captured some of the villagers and bound two of them in chains, the Indians massed along the border, and it was believed they were about to launch an attack on Virginian settlements.

[4] Scarborough at various times served as Speaker of the House of Burgesses,[5] on the Governor's Council, county sheriff, lawyer, planter, surveyor, firearms dealer, cattle rancher, merchant, ship owner, Accomack Justice, and militia colonel.

He employed Indians to herd his livestock while at the same time selling guns to them and condemning them in the General Assembly for obtaining firearms.

Scarborough set Toft up in business at a plantation known as Gargaphia on present day Gargathy Neck in northern Accomack County (seaside).