Lincoln-Mercer County KyArchives Biographies.....Kincaid, John February 15, 1791 - February 7, 1873 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/kyfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Sandi Gorin http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00002.html#0000404 May 3, 2005, 10:57 am Author: Kentucky Genealogy and Biography, Volume V, 4th edition, 1886 JOHN KINCAID was born in Mercer County, February 15, 1791. His father, Capt. James Kincaid, served in the Revolutionary war in the Virginia State line under Gen. George Rogers Clark, and in the thrilling campaigns of the "dark and bloody ground." His uncle, Capt. Joseph Kincaid, was killed at the battle of the Blue Licks, at the head of his company. His grandfather moved with the remainder of his family from Virginia, and settled near the town of Danville, Ky., in the year 1778. They were of Scotch descent, and were intense Presbyterians in their religious convictions. John Kincaid, when a young man, removed to the county of Lincoln, and taught school near the town of Stanford. While he was thus engaged, in the year 1815, Hon. Thomas B. Montgomery, then judge of the Lincoln Circuit Court, attracted by his intellectual powers, persuaded young Kincaid to study law, which he did in the office of Judge Montgomery, at the conclusion of his school in the latter part of the year. After procuring his license he practiced law at the Stanford bar for six years, representing the county in the State Legislature in the meantime. He was then appointed commonwealth's attorney by Gov. Slaughter for the district for which Thomas B. Montgomery was judge. He held this position for about five years, and no similar office in Kentucky was ever filled with more ability than he brought to bear in the discharge of his official duties. This office he resigned to run for Congress, to which body he was elected, and served from 1829 to 1833, during the administration of President Jackson. He then returned to the county of Lincoln and resumed the practice of law, in which profession, it is safe to say, that he had few equals and no superiors in the State. In the forensic contests of that day with George Robertson, Ben Hardin, Squire Turner, James Harlan, Judge Richard Buckner, and Robert and Charles A. Wickliffe, John Kincaid was considered the peer of any of those distinguished men, and held front rank as a jurist. The conspicuous characteristics of his mind were strength and simplicity. He possessed great power in the analyzation of legal propositions, reducing them to their simplest elements, and letting day-light down into the bottom facts or principles of whatever he discussed. He was not what might be called an eloquent speaker. His mind gravitated irresistibly toward facts and principles. An original thinker, he had no use for books to furnish him with arguments, but used them simply to sustain himself in the positions already taken. He saw through the law of his case clearly, and could make others see without the aid of authorities. His manner of addressing court or jury was entirely natural. His voice was metallic and harsh, but this defect was lost sight of in the clearness of his statement and the resistless power of his logic. Awkward and slow without preparation, he as the most irresistible and powerful man in the argument of difficult legal propositions (Later a thorough preparation) that center Kentucky has yet produced. It is almost impossible for the clearest legal mind to discover the exact line of separation between logic and sophistry in his arguments. He was by nature a modest man, but when convinced that his cause was just, his intellect and whole person seemed to be on fire and consumed whatever opposition existed in the minds of his audience. He died while on a visit to his daughter, Mrs. Joseph Weisiger, near Nashville, Tenn., February 7, 1873, and in his death one of the greatest legal lights that Kentucky ever produced was extinguished. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/lincoln/bios/kincaid247gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/kyfiles/