Moses Pierce Kinkaid, attorney, judge, and congressman, came to O'Neill, Nebraska in 1881 to practice law. Kinkaid was born in West Virginia in l850 and received his law degree at the University of Michigan. He became a member of the Nebraska State
Senate in 1883 and served as chairman of the judicial committee. He was appointed judge of the ten-county l2th District in northwest Nebraska in 1887 by Governor John Thayer and served until 1896.
Kinkaid served ten consecutive terms in the United States Congress from 1903 to 1922 from the 6th District, In 1904 he proposed the Kinkaid Homestead Act which allowed settlers in a thirty-seven county area in northern and western Nebraska to homestead up to 640 acres in western Nebraska, and was instrumental in its passage.
The Kinkaid Act was intended to stimulate settlement in Nebraska's Sand Hills and panhandle, where farming was impossible on the 160 acres allowed by the original Homestead Act. The Kinkaid Act, like the Homestead Act, required the homesteader to live on the land for five years and make $800 worth of improvements. Although event the Kinkaid Act failed to provide enough land for farming in the Sand Hills, it did help bring settlers into western Nebraska. Moses Kinkaid also had a part in preventing the abandonment of Fort Niobrara in 1904 and of Fort Robinson in 1906.
Kinkaid was named to the Hall of Great Westerners, a division of the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in 1963. He died in Washington, D.C., on July 6, 1922, while serving in Congress.