Innes was born on January 4, 1752 in Caroline County, Virginia, United States, the son of the Reverend Robert Innes and Catharine (Richards) Innes. His father emigrated from Scotland before the middle of the eighteenth century and settled in Drysdale parish.
Harry was educated at Donald Robertson's school along with his brother James Innes, James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, and other sons of Virginia.
Innes was admitted to the bar and moved to Bedford County, where he built up a successful law practice. In 1776 and 1777 he administered powder mills and lead mines in the state under the Virginia Committee of Safety. In 1779 he was elected by the legislature to determine claims to unpatented lands in the district around Abingdon and, in that same year, was appointed escheator for his own county, where, in 1780, he was able to obtain thousands of pounds for the Virginia treasury.
As commissioner of the specific tax for Bedford County, the next year, he collected cattle and produce so successfully that, on March 27, 1782, he was appointed by Benjamin Harrison to be superintendent over the commissioners of six counties. In this difficult post he remained until the end of the war.
In October 1784 he was elected by the legislature to succeed Walker Daniel as attorney general for the western district of Virginia and, the next spring, moved over the mountains to settle in what is now the state of Kentucky. He became United States district judge for Kentucky in 1789 and served in that capacity until his death. He identified himself thoroughly with the life of the new country. The first year of his residence in Kentucky he was chosen a member of the board of trustees of Transylvania University, on which he continued to serve until April 11, 1792; the second year he was one of that group of intellectual men which called itself "The Political Club"; and as early as 1789 he was a member of the society that was organized to promote manufacture and, in 1790, established at Danville a cotton factory with machinery brought from Philadelphia.
He sat in the first constitutional convention, where he supported a resolution to abolish slavery, which was defeated after a hard struggle and by a close vote. By his intimate association with James Wilkinson and Benjamin Sebastian he brought upon himself grave suspicions that he had joined them in treasonable negotiations with Spain.
In 1806 he refused an irregular application of the federal district attorney for a warrant to compel the appearance in court of Aaron Burr but, upon Burr's own insistence, summoned the grand jury, which, however, refused to indict. The investigation of Sebastian's relations with Spain, in that same year, seemed to implicate Innes. Humphrey Marshall, a Federalist and bitter personal and political enemy, carried charges, first, to the Kentucky legislature and, then, through a resolution of that body, to the federal Congress, which refused to institute impeachment proceedings.
Not content with the action of Congress, Innes prosecuted two suits for libel. One, begun in 1806, was against Joseph M. Street, the editor of the Federalist Western World, which had charged corrupt intrigue with the Spanish government. After several years of litigation the courts awarded damages to Innes, and the defendant was forced to beg for some accommodation of the matter. The other suit was against Humphrey Marshall, who had anonymously written articles in the Western World, and resulted in a divided jury with each party paying costs. Nevertheless the long-standing quarrel continued to drag along until, on February 17, 1815, the two men signed a formal agreement not to mention each other disrespectfully, an agreement that was violated after Innes's death by Marshall in publishing the second (1824) edition of his History of Kentucky.
Innes died in 1816.
Harry Innes was famous for his service as the federal judge of the District of Kentucky, then a part of Virginia. He was the only federal judge in Kentucky until the Judiciary Act of 1801 made what had been the Kentucky District Court a part of the new Sixth Circuit. Besides, he served as president of the first electoral college which chose Kentucky's first Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
Innes supported Patrick Henry in opposition to Virginia's ratification of the federal Constitution.
He was the chief spokesman of Kentucky's need for protection against the outraged Indians and was active in the struggle for separate state existence.
Innes was married twice: first, to Elizabeth Calloway of Bedford County, Virginia, who died in 1791, and, second, to Mrs. Ann Shields, whose daughter, Maria Innes, married John J. Crittenden
