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John Henry Kinkead

John Henry Kinkead (10 December 1826-15 August 1904) was the Republican Governor of Nevada from 6 January 1879 to 1 January 1883 (succeeding Lewis R. Bradley and preceding Jewett W. Adams) and Governor of the District of Alaska from 4 July 1884 to 9 May 1885 (preceding Alfred P. Swineford).

Biography[]

John Henry Kinkead was born in Smithfield, Somerset County, Pennsylvania in 1826, and he went to school in Zanesville, Ohio and Lancaster, Ohio. He moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and founded a dry goods firm, and he moved to Marysville, Yuba County, California in 1854. Kinkead moved to Carson City, Nevada during a silver rush and participated in the organization of the Nevada Territory, serving as treasurer from 1862 to 1864 and as a member of its constitutional convention in 1864. In 1867, he journey to Alaska with the Occupancy Commission and witnessed Alaska's transfer from Russian to American possession, and he was appointed postmaster by President Andrew Johnson. He served as Sitka's unofficial mayor while operating a trading post there, and he returned to Nevada in 1871 and settled in Unionville. He also founded Washoe City, built smelters, and became a railroad promoter. Kinkead served as Governor of Nevada from 1879 to 1883, opposing Chinese immigration due to his white supremacist views and his belief that Chinese cheap labor would compete with better-paid American labor. Kinkead also supported mining efforts, the creation of toll roads, and railroad interests, and, in 1884, he was appointed Governor of the newly-formed District of Alaska. He resigned in 1885 after having a political rival, Sheldon Jackson, arrested on trumped up charges, and he returned to Carson City, where he died in 1904.

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