Joshua Fry Speed

Joshua Fry Speed
Portrait of Speed as a young man.
Kentucky State Representative
In office 1848–1850
Personal details
Born	November 14, 1814 Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Died	May 29, 1882 (aged 67) Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	General store co-owner (with Abraham Lincoln), real estate investor, plantation owner (through family), Kentucky representative
Known for	Abraham Lincoln's best friend and a close confidant during his administration as president

Joshua Fry Speed (November 14, 1814 – May 29, 1882) was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln from his days in Springfield, Illinois, where Speed was a partner in a general store. Later, Speed was a farmer and a real estate investor in Kentucky, and also served one term in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1848.

Joshua Fry Speed was born at Farmington, to John Speed and Lucy G. Speed (née Fry) on November 14, 1814. On his father's side, Speed's ancestry can be traced back to 17th century cartographer and historian John Speed. John Speed's great grandson (James Speed) emigrated to Virginia in 1695, and in turn his grandson Captain James Speed, fought in the American Revolution during which he received a serious wound in 1781, for which the Continental Congress awarded him 7,500 acres in the territory of Kentucky. Captain Speed emigrated to Kentucky in 1782, became a judge and land speculator (accumulating 45,000 acres in central Kentucky) and member of the territorial conventions by which Kentucky became separated from Virginia. One of Captain Smith's children (out of six), John Smith, owned a store in the 1790s, operated (with leased slaves) a salt works. In the 1800s his father gave him a large track on which to begin farming. In 1808, after the death of his first wife, he married Lucy Gilmer Fry. In addition to growing staples, John Speed used his farm to produce the labor-intensive cash crop of hemp. He would acquire other businesses as well, including a blacksmith. By his death in 1840 he had become one of Kentucky's largest slave-owners with 54.

Lucy Speed had come from Virginia where her family was close to Thomas Jefferson. Her father inherited considerable wealth in land and slaves in Virginia but left for Kentucky in 1788 or 1789 and opened a school in his house where he taught a number of boys who would later become prominent. Joshua Speed was the fifth of 11 children from the marriage (one of which died in infancy the year Joshua was born). Although Speed remained close to his mother until her death, he seems to have had a strained relationship with his father, who complained of "all your abuse of me" when Joshua was 15. Depression seems to have run in the family with evidence of it in his father, two of his brothers (with James Speed showing signs of clinical depression) and Joshua himself. Lincoln himself even observed of Joshua that "you are naturally of a nervous temperament."