John Franklin Kinney was born to William and Julia Howe Kinney at Ogden, New York, west of Rochester on the Erie Canal on June 20, 1860. The Kinneys were from Coolkenno in the southwester Co. Wicklow highlands of Leinster, in Ireland. The Howes emigrated from Co. Tipperary in Munster Province of the same. Known as "the Judge", JFK's early practice focused on bankruptcy law in the difficult economic times of the late 1880s. In 1890, New York Governor David B. Hill appointed JFK to the Monroe County bench. Rising through the local bar, Judge Kinney was a founder of Rochester's Bar Association in 1892. The Democratic Party nominated him for the judicial seat he was occupying in the next election, an election ending in the defeat of all Democrats on the ticket except for Judge Kinney. Kinney was thereby the first Democrat elected to county-wide office in eight years. In 1893, now newly-elected Judge Kinney was a delegate for the New York State Democratic Party’s Monroe County, Second Assembly District, representing local interests at the Saratoga Democratic Convention. In the mid-1990s, the Monroe County Democratic Party dissolved into feuding factions, necessitating State-level intervention. Judge Kinney led the Page County Committee, named for one of the local leaders. The Page County Committee politicked for three local politicians, Mssrs.Tracy, Kelly and Houck. Opposing Judge Kinney's Page County Committee were the Cleveland Legion, the Flower City Democracy movement, and the Smith County Committee. Mediating the party fight was Cord Meyer of Queens County, New York, whose grandson was Cord Meyer, Jr. After the turn of the century, Kinney was Chairman, Central Committee of the Democratic Party, Monroe County beginning in 1904. His chief antagonist in both local politics and in the practice of law was Thomas Raines. At the advent of the Progressive Era, Judge Kinney retired to private practice, and took on contentious work. A friend and business partner with Rochester’s Mayor George Washington Aldridge, Kinney was nonetheless the attorney representing outliers, those excluded from Rochester's inner circle elite. This litigation dealt with corrupt public contracts, like the case taken to the U.S. Supreme Court as Moffett, Hodgkins & Clarke Co. v. City of Rochester. His case load reflect a laissez faire economics declining in popularity with the advent of Progressive-era regulation. Kinney represented dairy producers facing State prosecution over food quality-related transgressions. In 1898, Judge Kinney had stepped down from the bench after he was appointed Corporation Counsel for the City of Rochester, a position he held through 1903. His work for the City focused on Rochester’s growth, and the need for infrastructure. He hired future Corporation Counsel Benjamin B. Cunningham. Cunningham would later oppose the Judge in the “Damaged Goods” case. In April 1901, the Judge partnered with other businessmen – including Mayor George Washington Aldridge – in founding the Genessee & Orleans Railway Company at Albion, New York. The electric railway was to foster tourist industry at Point Breeze, Lake Ontario with a twenty-seven mile track from Batavia, New York northward to the lake.