Appalachian Figures Series
When Judge Andrew Jackson Kirk died at his home in Paintsville on the night of 25 May 1933, the Big Sandy News told its readers that his life had been “interwoven with the very fiber of life in this section of the state.”
For nearly half a century he stood at the center of eastern Kentucky’s legal and political world. Born in a Martin County river town, trained in an Indiana law school, and trusted as county attorney, commonwealth’s attorney, circuit judge, and finally congressman, Kirk’s story shows how a “mountain man” carried local courthouse politics all the way to Washington.
This is an effort to gather what we can about his life from contemporary newspapers, government records, and the hilltop cemetery that still bears his name near Inez.
Warfield, the Tug Fork, and a Mountain Education
Andrew Jackson Kirk was born 19 March 1866 near Warfield in Martin County, Kentucky, a little river community along the Tug Fork. He grew up in the Reconstruction era borderland between Kentucky and West Virginia, a region still feeling the aftershocks of war, the arrival of the railroad, and the first stirrings of industrial coal and timber.
Like many ambitious young men from the Big Sandy, Kirk followed the familiar route from rural schools to a Midwestern normal and law program. His official congressional biography and the 1927 Congressional Directory agree that he studied law at Valparaiso University in Indiana and graduated from its law department in 1890. The Big Sandy News obituary adds the local angle, placing his graduation in the wider story of a Martin County boy who went north to get his training and then came home to put it to work.
That same year he was admitted to the bar and began practicing in his home county, serving the people who had watched him grow up.
“At an Early Age”: County Attorney and Commonwealth’s Attorney
Kirk’s obituary notes that he “began his rise to prominence” when the voters of Martin County chose him as county attorney while he was still a young man. Official reference works later standardized the dates. They show him serving as county attorney of Martin County from 1894 to 1898 and then stepping up to become commonwealth’s attorney for the Twenty Fourth Judicial District from 1898 to 1904.
Those positions placed him at the center of local criminal justice at a time when eastern Kentucky was wrestling with moonshining cases, feuds, and the growing pains of a new coal economy. The court records that survive in Martin and neighboring counties, though not yet fully mined by historians, almost certainly preserve a paper trail of the cases he prosecuted and the deals he struck in those years.
Circuit Judge of the Twenty Fourth District
In 1904, voters in the mountain counties elevated Kirk again, this time to circuit judge of the Twenty Fourth Judicial District. Contemporary biographical sketches agree that he held this post until 1916.
As circuit judge he presided over serious criminal cases, property disputes, and business litigation for a wide stretch of territory. The Big Sandy News obituary remembered this as part of a “long succession of honors bestowed upon him by an appreciative public,” language that tells us how his supporters framed his career: steady advancement, earned by service, rather than a single dramatic leap.
Appalachia’s courthouses often produced its strongest political figures. In Kirk’s case, the bench became a springboard to statewide ambition.
“A Mountain Man”: The 1912 Campaign for Appellate Judge
By 1912, Kirk’s name carried enough weight that mountain Republicans put him forward for the Kentucky Court of Appeals. The Kentucky Mountaineer, a Salyersville paper, printed a full page campaign piece titled “Judge Andrew J. Kirk, For Appellate Judge,” capped with the proud tagline “A MOUNTAIN MAN.”
The article presented him as a son of the hills who had earned the right to speak for them. It stressed his Martin County origins, his Valparaiso law degree, and his years on the circuit bench, inviting Magoffin County readers to see him as a familiar type rather than a distant Frankfort figure.
That same year, the Mountain Advocate in Barbourville ran an approving article under the line “All Parties Are for Judge Kirk,” praising him as a candidate whose integrity attracted support across party lines. From that campaign comes the portrait of Kirk that now circulates in history books, preserved today on Wikimedia Commons as “Andrew J. Kirk (Kentucky Congressman).”
He did not win a seat on the Court of Appeals. Even so, the 1912 race reveals how mountain Republicans marketed themselves: as regional champions, deeply local yet fully capable of serving on Kentucky’s highest courts.
From Jenkins to Paintsville: Law Practice in the Coal Years
After leaving the bench in 1916, Kirk returned to private practice. Short congressional biographies and later reference works note that he practiced law first at Jenkins in Letcher County and then at Paintsville in Johnson County.
Jenkins was a booming coal town, home to the Consolidation Coal Company’s big operation on Elkhorn Creek. A lawyer of Kirk’s experience would have found plenty of work in a place where miners, railroads, and outside companies were reshaping the landscape almost overnight. When he shifted his base to Paintsville on the Levisa Fork, he moved into another community poised between river trade, timber, oil and gas, and the new hard road up the valley.
By the 1920s, then, Andrew J. Kirk was a familiar figure across the upper Big Sandy: a former judge, respected trial lawyer, and reliable Republican who had already made one bid for statewide office.
The Langley Scandal and a Special Election
Kirk’s brief time in Congress cannot be understood without the scandal that opened the door for him. John W. Langley, a fellow Republican who represented Kentucky’s Tenth District, had been a powerful figure in Prohibition politics. Convicted on charges related to liquor permits, he resigned his seat early in the Sixty Ninth Congress.
House records and the 1927 Congressional Directory show that Andrew J. Kirk, “Republican, of Jenkins and Paintsville,” was elected in a special contest to fill the vacancy. He took his seat on 13 February 1926 and served out the remainder of the term as representative from Kentucky’s Tenth District.
The women’s history volume Women in Congress, 1917–1990 later summarized the moment from the perspective of Katherine Gudger Langley, John Langley’s wife. It notes that Kirk served only as a caretaker. When Republicans chose their nominee for the next term, Katherine Langley defeated him in the primary, then went on to win the general election and reclaim the seat for the Langley family.
In other words, Kirk’s path to Washington ran straight through the politics of Prohibition, patronage, and family loyalty that shaped eastern Kentucky Republicanism in the 1920s.
Committees: Labor, Railroads, and Veterans
Kirk did not stay in Congress long enough to become a national figure, yet committee rosters show where his colleagues expected him to work. In the 1927 Congressional Directory his name appears on the House Committees on Labor, Railways and Canals, and Invalid Pensions, groups that handled issues central to industrial Appalachia and to the aging veterans of the Civil War and Spanish American War.
Service on Labor would have exposed him to national debates over wages, hours, and workplace safety in the same years that miners and textile workers were striking across the country. Railways and Canals dealt with infrastructure and freight, including the rates that affected coal shipments from eastern Kentucky to outside markets. Invalid Pensions kept him in touch with former soldiers and their families, who were still a powerful constituency in his home region.
Though the surviving Congressional Record rarely highlights speeches by “Kirk of Kentucky,” the committee assignments alone remind us that even a one term mountain congressman had a hand in shaping policy on work, transportation, and veterans’ relief.
Return to Paintsville and Final Years
Kirk failed to secure renomination in 1926 and so left Congress at the close of the Sixty Ninth Congress in March 1927. He returned to Paintsville and resumed the law practice that had carried him from county office to the House of Representatives.
The Big Sandy News obituary gives our fullest picture of his later years. It stresses that his “prominence and success in the other phases of life were commensurate with his ability in the field of politics” and singles out his devotion to family as his most admired trait. It describes a household where public service and private loyalty went hand in hand.
Sometime before or during his early career, Kirk married Elizabeth Goble, a member of another well known Martin County family. Together they raised nine children. The 1933 obituary lists them as Conrad, Louie, Chester, Langley, Andrew Jr., and Alice, along with daughters who appear in the record under their married names: Mrs. C. T. Rule of Paintsville, Laban T. Kirk of Lexington, and Mrs. C. T. York, then living in Virginia. Later Johnson County obituary compilations for his son in law C. T. Rule confirm those ties and suggest that the family’s influence in local affairs outlived the judge himself.
On the night of 25 May 1933, Kirk died at home in Paintsville at the age of sixty seven. The Big Sandy News obituary notes that funeral services were held at Mayo Memorial Church in Paintsville, led by ministers from Inez, Paintsville, and Louisa, before his body was carried back to Martin County for burial. Graveside rites were conducted by the Inez Masonic lodge, a final honor for a man who had spent most of his life in public roles.
The Kirk Cemetery on the Hill
Today Andrew Jackson Kirk rests in the family burying ground near Inez known as the Kirk Cemetery. The political reference work The Political Graveyard lists it simply as “Kirk Cemetery near Inez,” naming him as a former state court judge and member of Congress buried there. Find A Grave photographs of his headstone confirm the dates 1866 to 1933 and help locate the cemetery in the hills above the Tug Fork.
The cemetery itself is a primary source in stone. Other Kirk family graves surround his, marking a wider kin network tied to the early history of Martin County. Topographic maps and modern mapping sites place the cemetery on a ridge above the valleys he served, a literal reminder that his story belongs to both the courthouse squares and the small family plots scattered through the hills.
Remembering Andrew J. Kirk as an Appalachian Figure
Andrew Jackson Kirk never became a household name in American politics. His congressional service was brief, his committee work steady rather than spectacular, and his fame was largely confined to the counties of the upper Big Sandy.
Yet when we piece together his life from newspapers, government directories, and grave markers, a clear Appalachian pattern emerges. He was a son of the Tug Fork who pursued education beyond the mountains, then returned to serve as lawyer, prosecutor, judge, and finally congressman. His career climbed step by step from county attorney to circuit judge to candidate for appellate judge and, at last, to a short term in Congress. His 1912 campaign literature urged voters to see him as “A Mountain Man,” and his 1933 obituary assured them that his life was woven into the fabric of eastern Kentucky.
In a region where courthouse politics shaped everything from land titles to labor disputes, figures like Kirk mattered. They translated local expectations of justice into the language of state law and, for a time, into the debates of the national legislature.
For Appalachian history, recovering his story reminds us that the road from a Martin County riverbank to a desk in the United States Capitol did not always run through big city political machines. Sometimes it started with a young man from Warfield who went to Valparaiso, came home with a law degree, and spent the rest of his life walking the long, complicated path between holler and hilltop cemetery.
Sources & Further Reading
Big Sandy News Recorder (Louisa, Kentucky), obituary “KIRK, Andrew J.,” 2 June 1933. Transcribed by the Lawrence County, Kentucky Genealogical & Historical Society, “Obit 1933.” LCKGHS
Kentucky Mountaineer (Salyersville, Kentucky), 7 June 1912. Campaign advertisement “Judge Andrew J. Kirk, For Appellate Judge,” featuring the tagline “A Mountain Man.” Internet Archive
Mountain Advocate (Barbourville, Kentucky), 4 October 1912. Article “All Parties Are for Judge Kirk,” reproduced in connection with the widely used portrait of Andrew J. Kirk. Wikimedia Commons+1
United States Congressional Directory, Sixty Ninth Congress, first session, 1926–1927. Biographical sketch of “ANDREW J. KIRK, Republican, of Jenkins and Paintsville,” and committee rosters listing him on the Committees on Labor, Railways and Canals, and Invalid Pensions. GovInfo+1
United States Congressional Directory, Sixty Ninth Congress, first session. Service table showing Kirk’s beginning of service in the House on 13 February 1926 as representative from Kentucky’s Tenth District. GovInfo
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Bioguide), entry “KIRK, Andrew Jackson (K000234).” Standardized summary of his life and offices, based on congressional records. Bioguide
“Andrew Jackson Kirk,” Wikipedia. Short encyclopedic biography, including birth and death dates, offices held, and post congressional career. Wikipedia
Women in Congress, 1917–1990 (U.S. House of Representatives, Office of History and Preservation), chapter on Katherine Gudger Langley. Provides context for the Langley scandal, the 1926 special election, and Kirk’s single term in the House. Wikipedia
The Political Graveyard entry “Kirk, Andrew Jackson (1866–1933).” Confirms his offices, party affiliation, and burial in Kirk Cemetery near Inez, Martin County, Kentucky. Political Graveyard
Lawrence County, Kentucky Genealogical & Historical Society obituary and cemetery compilations; Johnson County, Kentucky obituary compilations for 1948 (including the obituary of C. T. Rule, noting his connection to the Kirk family). LCKGHS+1
Find A Grave entries for Kirk Cemetery near Inez, including the memorial for Andrew Jackson Kirk and related family graves. WikiTree+1