John Edwin Kimball papers

John Edwin Kimball, B.A. 1858

Born July 18, 1833, in Webster, Mass.; Died September 7, 1916, in Worcester, Mass.

John Edwin Kimball, son of William and Polly (Robinson) Seaman Kimball, was born in Webster, Mass., July 18, 1833. His father, who fought in the War of 1812, was for many years superintendent of a mill at Webster and later a carpenter and builder in Oxford, Mass. He was the son of Samuel Kimball, a soldier in a Connecticut regiment in the Revolutionary War, and Phebe (Burrell) Kimball, and a descendant of Richard Kimball, who in 1634 came from Ipswich, England, to Watertown, Mass. The Robinson family from which his mother was descended has been well known since Revolutionary times in the southern part of Worcester County, Mass. Mrs. Kimball was the daughter of William and Molly (Dudley) Robinson, and the granddaughter of Silas and Mary (Learned) Robinson.

John Kimball was prepared for Yale at the Nichols Academy, Dudley, Mass., and at the Leicester (Mass.) Academy. He first entered Yale with the Class of 1856, but withdrew in July 1853, returning in 1854 with the Class of 1858. In Sophomore year he was given two prizes in English composition and one in declamation, and in 1857 he was the orator for the Statement of Facts for Linonia. He served on the editorial board of the Yale Literary Magazine in Senior year.

In November 1858, he became principal of the high school at Oxford, Mass., where he remained until the following March. The next year was spent as private tutor with a family near Louisville, Ky., from which position he withdrew to allay the commotion excited by his having voted for Lincoln. He then served for a year as principal of the Ogden School in Chicago, Ill. Removing to St. Louis in 1862, he was for the next eighteen years identified with the public school system of that city. After serving successively as principal of the Washington School and the Central High School, and as assistant principal of the First High School, he organized, in 1871, a branch high school, of which he was for a time the head. In 1879, after having had charge of several grammar schools for a number of years, he was placed in charge of the Polytechnic Branch High School, which had just been formed by the consolidation of five branch high schools. For some time, he also held the position of principal of the O'Fallon Polytechnic Institute, an evening school. In October 1880, he left St. Louis to accept an appointment as superintendent of the schools of Hartford, Conn. A year later he took a similar position in Newton, Mass., where he was located until his retirement in 1884.

Since that time Mr. Kimball's home had been in Oxford, Mass., where he had taken an active interest in town affairs. For twelve years he was moderator of the town meetings. He served several terms as a member of the Board of Selectmen and of the School Committee, was chairman of the building committee of the Larned Free Public Library, for several years serving as a trustee of the institution, and was at one time chairman of the standing committee of the North Congregational Church, of which he was a deacon. For three years Mr. Kimball was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, and acted on the committee having oversight of the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst. He was an associate member of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, a director of the Oxford National Bank, a vice-president of the Interstate Petroleum Company, and president of the Osage Consolidated Oil & Gas Company and of the Boston & New Mexico Copper Company. For many years during his residence in St. Louis Mr. Kimball was a deacon in the First Congregational Church.

He suffered a stroke of paralysis in February 1912, and was afterwards confined to his bed. In August 1916, he was removed to a sanitarium in Worcester, Mass., where he died the seventh of the following month. His body was taken to Oxford for burial in the family lot in South Cemetery.

He was unmarried. His brother, Thomas Dudley Kimball, a non-graduate of the Class of 1863, who served as captain of Company G, Fifty-first Regiment, Infantry, and later of Company A, Second Regiment, Heavy Artillery, Massachusetts Volunteers, during the Civil War, survives him.

Taken from Yale University Obituary Record, 1915-1920, pages 283-285.