Asa Kinney

photo courtesy Wisconsin Stat

Founder

Asa Kinney born May 21, 1810, in Homer, New York. He moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin Territory, in 1836 and had a farm in Oak Creek. He served in the first Wisconsin Constitutional Convention in 1846 and the last Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in 1847-1848, and represented southern Milwaukee County in the Wisconsin State Senate during the 1st and 2nd legislatures (1848, 1849).

He moved to California to mine for gold in 1852 and was elected to the California State Assembly for one term. He then returned to Wisconsin, first settling in Brooklyn, Green Lake County, then in Ripon. He served on the Ripon Common Council and was street commissioner.

Appointed colonel of the militia of Wisconsin in 1858, he served as sergeant-at-arms for the Wisconsin State Senate in 1859 and 1860. During the Civil War, he was a quartermaster in the 4th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, then enlisted in the 1st Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, where he was commissioned a lieutenant and also served as quartermaster. This regiment participated in the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Dzavis on May 10, 1865.

Kinney “is a man of pleasing address, fluent in conversation, and intelligent on an immense variety of subjects,” it was stated in “Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin” in 1880.

After working as a land and insurance agent, he joined a group of colonists who left Ripon, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac to help settle the new community of Russell, Kansas. There, he served as a judge and in the banking and insurance businesses. Kinney died Oct. 3, 1886.