Edward Irving Ford was born in Newark Valley, Tioga County, New York on June 28, 1825, the oldest son of Rev. Marcus and Clarissa (Clisbie) Ford. He entered Williams College as a sophomore in 1846 and was graduated in 1849. After several years spent teaching school, Ford began the study of medicine with doctors in Elmira and Binghamton before entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, from which he was graduated in 1860. Ford practiced medicine in Binghamton before enlisting for hospital service in May 1863. He was appointed acting assistant surgeon and assigned first to hospitals in Indiana and Missouri before being deployed to a field hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee after the Battle of Chickamauga. In 1864 he was commissioned surgeon of the 101st United States Colored Troops, and was appointed a member of the board of examiners of surgeons for the Colored Troops. He was honorably discharged in January 1866 and returned to Binghamton, where he practiced medicine and operated a drug store. In 1881 he removed to Asbury Park, New Jersey and operated a "Sea side sanatorium" until 1897, when ill health compelled his retirement and return to Binghamton.

Ford married Anna Shepard Perkins of Athens, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1851. She was also engaged in hospital work in Nashville during the Civil War. They had two daughters, both of whom died young. They raised a foster child, Jessie, who later married Frederick E. Hoover.

Ford was elected to membership of the Broome County Medical Society in 1862, and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic and the Presbyterian church.

Dr. Ford died in Binghamton on November 16, 1908. Obituaries were published in the November 17, 1908 issue of the Binghamton Press and Leader, and in the Obituary Record of the Alumni of Williams College (1886). A short biography was published in William S. Lawyer, ed. Binghamton: Its Settlement, Growth and Development (1900), pp. 421-422.