Coates Kinney

File:Coates Kinney.jpg

Coates Kinney

File:East Second Street District, Xenia, 235.jpg

Kinney's home on East Second Street in Xenia

Coates Kinney (November 24, 1826 - January 25, 1904) was a lawyer, politician, journalist, and poet from the United States.

Biography

Coates Kinney was born in 1826 near Penn Yan, New York. He was partly educated at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, studied law with Thomas Corwin, and was admitted to the bar in Cincinnati in 1856. After practicing law for about three years, he became a journalist, and worked on papers in Cincinnati, Xenia, Springfield, Illinois and elsewhere, among them the daily Cincinnati Times and the Ohio State Journal.

He was a paymaster in the U. S. Army from June 1861 until November 1865, and was mustered out with the commission of brevet lieutenant-colonel of volunteers. He was a delegate to the convention that nominated Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency in 1868, and its Ohio secretary. He was senator from the 5th district in the Ohio legislature 1882-1883, and delivered a speech against "The Official Railroad Pass".

He wrote poetry, and his verses were collected in Keeuka and Other Poems (Cincinnati, 1855) and Lyrics of the Ideal and the Real (1888). Of his verses, "The Rain on the Roof", which was set to music, was the most popular. He died in Ohio in 1904.

Works

• Keeuka and Other Poems (1855)
• Lyrics of the Ideal and the Real (1888)
• Mists of Fire: A Trilogy and Some Eclogs (1899)

References

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External links

• Coates Kinney at Find a Grave
• "Poets of Ohio" (2012) from the Ohio Historical Society and the State Library of Ohio