Harry Innes

For other uses, see Harry Innes (disambiguation) .

Harry Innes (January 4, 1752 – September 20, 1816) was a Virginia lawyer and patriot during the American Revolutionary War who became a local judge and prosecutor as well as helped establish the state of Kentucky , before he accepted appointment as United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kentucky and served until his death.

Contents

• 1 Early and family life

• 2 Career

  • 2.1 Agitation for independence of Kentucky from Virginia and anti-federalism

  • 2.2 Other activities

• 3 Federal judicial service

  • 3.1 Conflict with Humphrey Marshall

• 4 Personal life

• 5 Death and legacy

• 6 References

Early and family life

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Born on January 4, 1752, in Caroline County , Colony of Virginia , British America , to the former Catherine Richards and the Rev. Robert Innes. His father had graduated from Oxford University before emigrating from Scotland to the Virginia colony, and accepted a position as rector (Anglican clergyman) in Caroline County. Innes received a private education locally at Donald Robertson's school, then traveled to the colonial capital, Williamsburg to attend the College of William & Mary , where he read law beginning in 1772 with George Wythe .

His younger brother James Innes (1754–1798) would follow him at William and Mary, but would be dismissed from the college in 1775 for leading a band of students who blocked Governor Dunmore's agents from removing military stores to ships offshore.

Career

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Admitted to the Virginia bar when he reached legal age in 1773, Innes moved westward to Bedford County and began a private legal practice on what was then the frontier, as well as farmed and speculated in land. Like his younger brother James Innes, Harry Innes supported independence of the United States and Virginia as tensions mounted between the Virginia General Assembly and successive royal governors, especially after Lord Dunmore's War , which led Governor Dunmore to dismiss the House of Burgesses in 1775. From 1776 to 1777, the local Virginia Committee of Safety employed Innes to manage the militarily crucial Chiswell lead mines on the New River , in what was then Fincastle (now Wythe ) County, as well as to procure other necessary supplies for the Continental Army . Meanwhile, his brother James took up arms, received a commission as lieutenant colonel and became an aide to General George Washington , fighting at the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth.

In 1778, when James Innes became a navy commissioner, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry appointed Harry Innes deputy attorney for Bedford County. In 1779, the Virginia legislature appointed Harry Innes as commissioner to settle claims to unpatented lands around Abingdon . In that same year, Governor Thomas Jefferson appointed Harry Innes escheator for Bedford County, and he began liquidating properties of Loyalists who had left the colony. His success in those endeavors (and perhaps James Innes' election to the Virginia House of Delegates representing James City County ) led on March 27, 1782, to Harry Innes' being appointed as superintendent over the commissioners of six southwestern Virginia counties: Bedford, Campbell , Charlotte , Halifax , Henry and Pittsylvania .

Harry Innes would soon travel the Wilderness Road over the Cumberland Gap and seek his fortune in what had been called Kentucky County until being split into three sparsely settled counties in 1780. In the fall of 1782, Virginia's legislature elected Innes as an Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature for the District of Kentucky. On November 3, 1782, Innes was sworn in at Crow's Station (in Pittsylvania County near present-day Danville ), as were Judges Caleb Wallace and Samuel McDowell , but he did not move to the District of Kentucky until 1783. Meanwhile, residents of what was then Fayette County , Jefferson County and Lincoln County repeatedly petitioned Virginia's legislature as well as the Continental Congress to create a new state of Kentucky, and held several conventions at Danville as discussed below. Innes served as Attorney General for the District of Kentucky from 1784 to 1789, the year of his accepting the federal judicial posts and months before Virginia's legislature formally consented to creation of the new state.

Agitation for independence of Kentucky from Virginia and anti-federalism

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