JUDGE LINUS S. KINDER, prominent lawyer of West Texas, has been identified with the town of Plainview in Hale county since they came into organized existence about 1888. He has been elected to offices of trust, ahs been favored with an extensive legal business, and in all the activities of a busy and useful career has made a reputation for fidelity to duty and high integrity and personal worth.
He was born in 1865 in Cape county, Missouri, where his family were among the very earliest settlers, and that section of the state has been adorned by worthy men and women of the name for more than a century. It is stated that on Christmas day of the year 1800, three years before Napoleon transferred to the great country west of the Mississippi to the United States government, the paternal grandfather of the present Judge Kinder, who was native of North Carolina, crossed the Mississippi river at the point where Chester, Illinois, now stands, and continued thence on his way to Cape county, Missouri, where he became a settler, first under French dominion and later under the stars and stripes.
Judge Kinder’s parents were W. F. and Mary E. (Clippard) Kinder. His father was born in Cape county, and died in 1902 in the adjoining county of Bollinger. He was a lifelong merchant in Cape and Bollinger counties, and was a prominent and well known man all through southeastern Missouri. The mother, who is still living in Bollinger county, was a native of North Carolina, and her family too were among the early pioneer settlers of Cape county.
After receiving a good public school education Judge Kinder spent about six years in study at the Missouri State University at Columbia, at first in the classical and scientific departments and then in the law department, being graduated from the latter in 1887, at the age of twenty-two. In the same year of his graduation he came to Texas, and after practicing law for awhile in Dallas county he came to Plainview, Hale county, in September, 1888. The county had been organized only in the preceding August, and he has been identified with it as one of the pioneer lawyers throughout the subsequent years. In 1892 he was elected district attorney for the fiftieth judicial district, comprising thirteen counties in West Texas, and in 1894 he was elected without opposition, serving four years altogether. For one term he served as county attorney of Hale county. He is one of the leading lawyers of the plains country, and has a large and lucrative practice.
Judge Kinder is prominent in Masonic work, and has attained the Royal Arch degrees in the order. In 1890 he was the leader in the efforts by which was organized at Plainview the first Masonic lodge in this country west of Hardeman county. Judge Kinder was married at Plainview to Miss Mary L. Rhodes, a native of Bollinger county, Missouri, and they have two daughters, May and Lucile.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 142-143.