Moses Kinkaid

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Moses Pierce Kinkaid (January 24, 1856 – July 6, 1922) was a Representative from Nebraska.

Kinkaid was born near Morgantown, Virginia, which is now in West Virginia. As a boy, he piloted fugitive slaves coming from the South and headed for Canada, to his grandparents home in Pennsylvania, where food, shelter, and aid were given to them. He attended the public schools and graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1876. Kincaid never married. He was admitted to the bar and practiced in Henry County, Illinois from 1876 until 1880 and in Pierre, Dakota Territory in 1880 and 1881. Kinkaid moved to O'Neill, Nebraska, and continued the practice of law.

He was a member of the Nebraska Senate in 1883, and served as a district judge from 1887 to 1900. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1900 to the Fifty-seventh Congress; he was then elected as a Republican to the Fifty-eighth and to the nine succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1903, until his death in Washington, D.C., July 6, 1922. During his tenure, he served as chairman of the Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands (Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses). He was interred in Prospect Hill Cemetery in O’Neill.

Kinkaid is best known for his sponsorship of the 1904 Kinkaid Act, which allowed homesteaders to claim up to 640 acres (1 mi.²) in parts of central and western Nebraska.

[edit] External links

Moses Kinkaid at Find A Grave

Preceded by William Neville (Populist)	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Nebraska's 6th congressional district 1903 – 1922	Succeeded by Augustin Reed Humphrey (R)