John Heyl Vincent was born on February 23, 1832, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the brother of Bethuel Thomas Vincent (1834-1920), a Methodist clergyman.

He was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and author. He was educated at Lewisburg Academy, Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan Institute, Newark, New Jersey. He entered the New Jersey Conference in 1853 and was transferred to the Rock River Conference in 1857. He became pastor of Trinity Church in Chicago in 1865 and established and edited the journals Northwest Sunday-School Quarterly (1865) and the Sunday-School Teacher (1866). He was reassigned to New York as general agent of the Methodist Sunday School Union in 1866. For the next twenty years, he was a leader of the American Sunday School movement. In 1874, Rev. Vincent created the Chautauqua Institute, a training center for Sunday school teachers based on Lake Chautauqua, New York. In 1881, the Chautauqua School of Theology was chartered, and in 1883, the Chautauqua University, with Rev. Vincent as chancellor, was created. In 1888, Rev. Vincent was elected Bishop and was appointed Resident Bishop in Europe in 1900, stationed at Zurich, Switzerland. He retired from the active episcopate in 1904. He was also an early advocate of women's rights in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1858, he married Sarah Elizabeth Dusenbury (1832-1909). He died on May 9, 1920, in Chicago, Illinois, and is buried in Portville, New York.