John Coburn (1762-1823), Kentucky judge
John Coburn (August 28, 1762 - February 10, 1823) was a Kentucky Pioneer, Circuit Court Judge, and Territory Judge. Early life John Coburn was born August 28, 1762, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young man, he received a collegiate education, read law under Luther Martin, Attorney General of Maryland, and was admitted to the bar. Martin took special interest in young Coburn, and under Martin's advice, Coburn moved from Philadelphia to Lexington, Kentucky in 1784. Career Upon his arrival in Lexington, Kentucky, he found success in mercantile trading, and as his local influence grew, he was elected town trustee. At this time, Kentucky was a Virginia county, and in August 1785, Coburn was appointed to the Danville committee to begin the process of admitting Kentucky as a state to the union. Statehood was granted on June 1, 1792. In 1786 he married Mary Moss, daughter of a prosperous Virginia planter, who migrated with her family over the Appalachians to Kentucky after the Revolutionary War. Her mother, twice widowed, had married Joseph Royall Farrar of Bryan Station several years after the infamous siege on the fort by the Wyandot, Shawnee, and Lenape warriors led by the British Captain William Caldwell and Simon Girty. In 1794, Coburn moved his growing family to the town of Washington, Kentucky, the second largest town, after Lexington, and the county seat for Mason County. He was appointed Circuit Court Judge of Mason County in 1795, a position he held for 10 years. In Washington, Coburn partnered with Dr. Basil Duke (grandfather of Basil W. Duke, Confederate Brigadier General) and Captain Nathaniel Wilson in land speculation and merchant trading. Coburn and Duke built a house on Green Street, opposite the court house, in which the families occupied separate apartments. Wilson built a house on an adjoining lot, now called the Albert Sidney Johnston House, the birthplace of the Confederate General who died in the Battle of Shiloh. Wilson died in 1796, and Coburn and Duke continued purchasing large amounts of land in Mason County, the surrounding counties, and across the river in Ohio. In 1801 they laid out the town of Decatur in what would eventually be Brown County, Ohio. They were also appointed to a committee tasked with building Franklin Academy in the town of Washington. In 1796, he was appointed by the Kentucky Governor, James Garrard, along with Robert Johnson and Buckner Thruston, to join three elected commissioners from Virginia to settle the boundary line between the states of Kentucky and Virginia, and Coburn wrote the final report. Coburn served in the Kentucky Electoral College for three presidential elections: 1796, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr; and 1804, Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton. In August 1798, in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Coburn was appointed to a committee requesting the governor of Kentucky call for an early convening of the legislature. The ensuing meetings of the Legislature resulted in the passing of the famous Kentucky Resolutions which were