John Franklin Kinney

William D. Kinney was a Democratic activist, clerk of the town of Ogden, and weighmaster on the Erie Canal at Rochester from 1878 to 1879.

The family was native to Coolkenno on the Wicklow–Carlow county border, Leinster Province, in the years when Ireland was still a colony of the United Kingdom.

Both families anglicized their names from "Kenny" to "Kinney" and "Hough" to "Howe" in order to mitigate discrimination and assimilate within the American Protestant majority.

[5] Two years later, the Democratic Party in Monroe County had dissolved into feuding factions, necessitating intervention by State officials.

Other factions were represented by the Cleveland Legion, the Flower City Democracy movement, and the Smith County Committee.

Though a personal friend and business partner with Rochester's Mayor George Washington Aldridge, Kinney was also the attorney to which plaintiffs not well-connected would bring their cases.

These often dealt with corruptly managed public contracts, such as the one Judge Kinney took to the United States Supreme Court via Moffett, Hodgkins & Clarke Co. v. City of Rochester.

[9] His later cases also reflect a free market preference and a disdain for Progressive-era regulation, including reasonable restrictions against business in the interest of public health.

[10] Kinney also represented milk and oleomargarine producers facing State prosecution over food quality-related transgressions.

In April 1901, the Judge joined with other Rochester businessmen – including Mayor George Washington Aldridge – in founding the Genesee & Orleans Railway Company headquartered at Albion, New York.