Lincoln-Mercer County KyArchives Biographies.....Kincaid, John February 15, 1791 - February 7, 1873
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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. 


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