James Bradley Finley was born in North Carolina on July 1, 1781, where his father was working as a Presbyterian minister.

A move to Kentucky was frustrated by land pirates, and the family returned to Ohio.

Upon his 1801 marriage to Hannah Strane, he built a cabin and returned to the backwoods life.

[2] He joined the Ohio conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1808, and was ordained as a minister in 1812.

Retaining the superintendency of this mission for two years, he subsequently continued in the itinerant ministry as pastor and presiding elder till 1845, when he was appointed chaplain of the Ohio Penitentiary.