lawyer, politician, judge, b. Rockdale, Pa. He moved with his parents to Wisconsin in 1846, settling in what is now the Township of Windsor, Dane County. He was privately educated, taught school briefly, and in 1853 began to read law in the Madison office of Vilas and Remington. Admitted to the bar in 1854, he set up a law practice in Madison. A Democrat, Pinney held various local offices including those of city attorney and city councilman, and in 1869 was an unsuccessful candidate for state attorney general. He was state assemblyman (1875), and in 1874, as mayor of Madison, instituted the movement for a free public library system. As a lawyer, Pinney was known as a master of correct legal procedure. He reported the 16th volume of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Reports (1865), and in 1870 was appointed by the state supreme court to report the earlier decisions of the territorial supreme court, an appointment later extended to include the work of the first state supreme court. In all, Pinney reported the decisions of the supreme court for the years from 1836 to June, 1853, published in three volumes known as Pinney's Wisconsin Reports (1872-1876). In 1891 he was elected to the state supreme court, serving from Jan., 1892, until his resignation because of ill health in Nov., 1898. J. R. Berryman, ed., Bench and Bar of Wis. (2 vols., Chicago, 1898); Wis. Reports, 104 (1900), pp. xxxi-xl; Madison Democrat, Apr. 2, 1899; WPA MS.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]