Alpha Jefferson Kynett was born on August 12, 1829 in Adams County, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the youngest of the eight children of John and Polly (Peterson) Kynett. In 1832 his parents moved to Ohio, in 1838 to Indiana, and in 1842 to Iowa, where they had their part in the exploits of the pioneer settlers.
Kynett's early education was necessarily limited, but he pursued relentlessly a course of self-culture that yielded advantages far in excess of those conferred by the ordinary college training of his day. When he was twenty-two years old he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church by joining the Iowa Conference.
Kynett was ordained deacon by Bishop Scott in 1853, and elder by Bishop Simpson in 1855. In 1860 he was appointed presiding elder of Davenport district, a position of heavy responsibility for so young a man.
During the Civil War he became a member of Governor Kirkwood's staff, and aided in raising and equipping troops for the front. In 1864 he was elected for the first time a delegate to the Methodist General Conference, and was reelected successively every four years. He soon rose to prominence in this body and became a dominant factor in the molding of legislation.
In the General Conference of 1864 he was the directing force in the establishment of the Church Extension Society, formulating the legislation that initiated it and writing its constitution. This organization was the outgrowth of the Church Extension Society of the Upper Iowa Conference, which was formed in 1864 at Kynett's suggestion and of which he was corresponding secretary. In 1867 he became secretary of the general organization and in that office he remained until his death.
He gave to his denomination an administration of remarkable efficiency, aiding, in the thirty-two years of his incumbency, over eleven thousand churches with loans and donations that aggregated over six millions of dollars, and securing the erection of hundreds of churches all over the country, especially in the developing areas of the West. In connection with this work he edited the bimonthly, Christianity in Earnest, from 1889 until his death.
Kynett was one of the founders of the Anti-Saloon League, the plan of arraying the various church denominations in a determined crusade against the liquor traffic having been put into effective operation by him while he was a young pastor in Iowa. He organized in 1893, as a nonpartisan movement, the Interdenominational Christian Temperance Alliance of Ohio, and in 1895 he joined Luther B. Wilson of Washington, D. C. , in calling the convention that created the Anti-Saloon League of America. It was largely through his energetic direction that the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church was formed, and he was an influential factor in its earlier onslaughts against the liquor traffic.
Kynett was a stalwart in the advocacy of many notable causes, such as lay representation in the General Conference, equal lay and ministerial representation in the same body, and the admission to it of women as members.
In 1854 Kynett married Althea Pauline, daughter of the Reverend James Gilruth of Davenport, Iowa.
