Anthony William Gardiner (1820–1885) served as the 9th President of Liberia from 1879 until 1883. He was the first and only Liberian Whig to hold the Governorship. Gardner was born in the state of Virginia in the United States. In 1831, when he was still a child, his family relocated to Liberia under the sponsorship of the American Colonization Society. Gardner received his law degree in Liberia and, in 1846, he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, which drafted Liberia's Commonwealth status and its constitution. He became Liberia's first attorney general and later served in the National Legislature from 1855 to 1871.