Blackford County Biography Ref. Page

DR. ABNER D. KIMBALL. Few men of the past generation in Grant county, Indiana, have been more sorely missed or more sincerely mourned than the late Dr. Abner D. Kimball. He is not only missed because of his high professional ability but also because of his splendid personality and the gifts that won him the friendship of the entire county. He bore the reputation of being one of the most skillful surgeons in the state of Indiana, but he had another reputation of which he was much prouder and that was of having the ability of winning everyone for his friend. For many years he was closely identified with the interests of Marion, Indiana, being chief surgeon of the Marion branch of the National Military Home, and he took an active part in the life of the people of Marion.

Dr. Abner Kimball was born in Coshocton county, Ohio, on the 24th of January, 1839, the son of Moses and Louisa (Powell) Kimball. His father was a native of Coshocton county also, but his mother was a Southern woman, having been born near Richmond, Virginia. The Kimball family were of English origin and two brothers settling in New Hampshire or Connecticut early in the eighteenth century founded the family in the United States. Moses Kimball lived in the state of Ohio until 1850 when he removed with his family to Miami county, Indiana, and there resided until 1872, when he went yet further west and settled in Wilson county, Kansas. There he died in 1886. The children of Moses and Louisa Kimball were nine in number, as follows: Abner D., Henry, Thomas C., Millard, Charles, Frank, Henrietta, Nancy and Harriet.

Dr. Abner D. Kimball grew up on the farm of his father, acquiring his elementary education in the schools of Miami and Grant counties, 1ndiana. He then attended the high school in Marion and then took up the study of medicine with Dr. Frazier, of Converse, Indiana. This was in 1857, and during the following winter he attended his first course of lectures in Rush Medical College, at Chicago. During 1859 and 1860 he attended his second course of lectures and in the spring of 1860 he was graduated from this famous old middle west institution which has turned out so many of the best physicians and surgeons in the country.

Immediately after his graduation he began the practice of his profession at Converse, Indiana, and here he remained until he enlisted in the fall of 1862 in the Union army. He was mustered into the service as first assistant surgeon of the Forty-eighth Indiana Infantry and later on in the course of the war he served as acting assistant surgeon of the Ninety-ninth Indiana Infantry. He served under General Sherman in the famous march to the sea and was with him during the Carolina campaign and again when the cry heard throughout the army was "On to Richmond." He was mustered out of the service at Louisville, Kentucky, on the 20th day of July, 1865.

After the war the doctor resumed his practice in Converse, Indiana, and remained there until 1884 when he removed to Marion. Here on the 20th of May, 1890, he received the appointment as chief surgeon of the Marion branch of the National Military Home for Disabled Volunteers. He held this position for many years, filling the post to the great satisfaction of both the soldiers unto whom he ministered and of those in authority who had placed him in charge. Shortly after the war in the winter of 1868-1869 Dr. Kimball took a course in surgery in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and after that time he was always especially interested in surgery and in the advance which that branch of medical science has made of late years, for he had seen the horrors of the crude surgery of the battlefield and realized how necessary a greater knowledge was to surgeons. He died in Marion, November 4, 1904.

Dr. Kimball was a member of the Grant County Medical Society of the Indiana State Medical Society and also of the Association of Army Surgeons of the United States. Fraternally he was a member of the Masons and was a Knight Templar in this order. He was also a member of the Loyal Legion.

Dr. Kimball was married in Wabash county, Illinois, in October, 1865, to Henrietta Haupt. Mrs. Kimball was born in Wabash county and was a daughter of Aaron Haupt. Four children were born to the doctor and his wife, as follows: Maude, who died in infancy; Clyde; Nellie and Edwin, who is county auditor of Grant county, and of whom notice is given elsewhere in this volume.

"BLACKFORD AND GRANT COUNTIES INDIANA, A CHRONICLE OF THEIR PEOPLE PAST AND PRESENT WITH FAMILY LINEAGE AND PERSONAL MEMOIRS"; Complied Under the Editorial Supervision of BENJAMIN G. SHINN; vol. II ; THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY; CHICAGO AND NEW YORK; 1914
Submitted by:Peggy Karol and Karen Overholt

EDWIN H. KIMBALL, of Marion, one of the younger business men of that city, is at present serving efficiently as auditor of Grant county. He is a native of Indiana and has lived during the greater part of his life in Grant county, where be has won a place for himself in the affectionate regard of the citizens of the community.

The Kimball family is one of the best known in this section of Indiana, the father of Edwin H. Kimball, Dr. A. D. Kimball being one of the most popular men in this part of the state. Dr. Abner Daniel Kimball was born in Coshocton, Ohio, and lived in Grant county, Indiana for many years. He was a man of great nobility of character and was a friend to men of all classes, winning deserved popularity through his kindness of heart and generosity of spirit. He married Henrietta Haupt, who was a native of the state of Illinois. They became the parents of four children, Maude, the eldest, is now deceased, Clyde lives in Wabash county, Indiana, Nellie P. Kimball, of Marion and Edwin H. Dr. Kimball died on the 4th of November, 1904.

Edwin H. Kimball was born at Xenia, in Miami county, Indiana, on the 26th of September, 1874. He later came to Marion with his parents and here he received his elementary education, being graduated from the high school in Marion. He then entered the Indiana Medical College, with the intention of making medicine his profession. His studies were interrupted during his first year, however, by the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, and his enlistment in the medical corps. After the war was over he took up the study of dentistry, and was graduated from the Indiana Dental College in 1901.

Returning to Marion he began the practice of dentistry and for twelve years he was a successful practitioner in his home city. In 1911 he was elected auditor of Grant county, and assumed office in 1912. He has served in this office since that time to the entire satisfaction of the residents of this county.

In politics Mr. Kimball is a member of the Republican party. He is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and of the Knights of Pythias. He also belongs to the Sons of Veterans and to the Spanish-American War Veterans Association. In religious matters he is a member of the Presbyterian church, and his college fraternity is Delta Sigma Delta, which is a professional fraternity. He is a member of the Elks, No. 195, of Marion.

On the 28th of April, 1898, Mr. Kimball was married to Ella Vivian Douris, a daughter of John and Mary Douris, of Bedford, Indiana.

JOSIAH T. WALTHALL is a general farmer and stock raiser of Mill township and the owner of a finely improved and well kept farm. He confines his activities principally to stock, which he feeds for the market, and his success has been pleasing to contemplate. Immense barns and other buildings, with a fine farm home, comprise the improvements he has wrought along these lines, and everywhere is Mr. Walthall known for an enterprising and successful farming man. He has spent twenty-five years on his present place, and displays a pardonable pride in his achievements as farmer and stock man.

Born in Clinton county, Ohio, on June 9, 1864, Josiah T. Walthall is the son of David Walthall, and the grandson of William A. Walthall, a native of Virginia.

William A. Walthall was reared in the state of his birth and there married a native daughter of the same state. Their family was practically reared when they came to Clinton county, Ohio, and there the aged folks died at the home of their son, David Walthall. Though it is not known what was their exact age at the time of their passing, it is a fact that they were well advanced in years. They were Quakers, and were the parents of four sons and three daughters, named Thomas, William, Daniel, David, Martha, Elizabeth and one other. Of these all but one is deceased, and all but one or two married and left children.

David Walthall was born in Virginia in the year 1828, as nearly as can be ascertained, and he was quite a lad when the family migrated to Ohio and there settled in Clinton county. Their farm was near the Quaker meeting house of their community. When David Walthall reached man's estate he succeeded duly to the old home place of his father, and they passed their closing years with him in the home that they had provided years before. He improved the place in many ways as time passed, and was there married to Miss Louise Carter, who was born and reared in Clinton county. She came of a well known Virginia family of Carters, who came as pioneers to Clinton county, and there ended their days. In 1868 David Walthall brought his wife and children to Grant county, where he believed he would find better conditions for a man of his position and they located without much delay on the Jesse Winslow farm in Fairmount township. Some years later he and his wife went to Kansas to live, and there the father died in 1894. His widow, who yet survives, has her home in Nebraska with one of their sons and she is now eighty-four years of age. They were lifelong Quakers, and the mother still is faithful in her adherence to the church of her birth.

Josiah T. Walthall was born in Clinton county, Ohio, on June 9, 1864, and he was but four years of age when his parents came to Grant county to make their home. He was reared to farm life, and was given such education as the country schools of his community afforded. In early manhood he began farming activities on his own account and all his life has been spent in devotion to that enterprise. The farm he occupies today was the first one he owned, and he came into possession of it almost a quarter of a century ago. As has been stated previously, he has enjoyed a pleasing success in his chosen enterprise, and is prosperous and prominent in the township.

Mr. Walthall was married in Mill township to Miss Rhoda J. Harris, a native of Mill township and the daughter of Rev. David and Rachael (Wyandt) Harris, relative to whom a sketch wil1 be found immediately following this brief review, so that further mention of the parents of Mrs. Walthall is not necessary at this juncture.

Mr. and Mrs. Walthall have two children, Telfer D., now living at home, unmarried, and a graduate of the Fairmount Academy, and H. Delight, who, after finishing with her course in the grade schools of her home town, pursued an oratorical course in the Marion Normal Institute. She is now the wife of J. LeRoy Farrington and resides in Howard county. They have one daughter, Beatrice R., born on November 6, 1911.

Mr. and Mrs. Walthall and family are members of the Friends church of North Grove, and are prominent people in their community.

REV. DAVID HARRIS. The Harris family of which Rev. David Harris is a representative comes of fine old North Carolina stock, Quakers all and for the most part farming people. They are a family of Scotch and English ancestry, and it is an established fact that the first of the name came to these shores prior to the Revolutionary war period. On their native heath they were Quakers of the Fox stamp, and on settling in North Carolina they helped to organize the church there.

The paternal grandfather of Rev. David Harris was Rev. Obediah Harris, born about 1775, and he was reared to farm life in his home community. He early gave himself to the work of the church of the Friends, becoming a minister, and he was one of the most influential churchman of his day, laboring long and faithfully in the spiritual behalf of his fellows, in whatever community he found himself. He was known to be an earnest worker and one devoted to his calling. It is said of him that so deeply engrossed in his work was he that he has been known to preach aloud in his sleep. While yet a resident of North Carolina he met and married his wife, a North Carolina girl, and all their children were born in their native state. Indeed, they practically grew up there.

Among their children were Thomas of whom further mention is made later; David; John; Jonathan; Susanna; Rachael; and of his second marriage there was one child, Jesse. All these children reached years of maturity; all married and reared families and died in advanced age; all were birthright Quakers; and all but Jonathan died in Indiana, he having ended his days in North Carolina.

Obediah Harris with his family came north in about 1820, bring with them all their worldly goods. They made the long trip in the primitive fashion of the day, riding slowly by day and camping out at night, and they finally brought up in Wayne county where they settled on Government land just north of New Garden. Mr. Harris hewed a little home out of the wilderness there, and when the Indians began to harass the white settlers and they fled to Richmond for a refuge, he continued at his work in the forest and field, trusting in God and His promises, and enjoying complete immunity from the annoyance that many of his acquaintances were subjected to at the hands of the Redmen.

For many years Rev. Harris preached in that section of the country, and he was a member of a committee for years that helped in the building of a goodly number of churches throughout the state. He organized many of them single handed, and when he died at his Wayne county home, full of years and secure in the knowledge of a life well spent in the interests of his fellows, he was truly mourned by all who had come within the sphere of his radiant influence. He was past eighty when he passed on, and a portrait done of him in the latter years of his life showed him to be a man of magnificent physique, and a patriarch of the old Colonial type, dressed in the garb peculiar to a period of half a century previous.

Thomas Harris, the father of the subject of this review, was born in North Carolina in about 1875. He was reared there and he also took unto himself a wife in that state. She was Mary, the daughter of George Shugart, of an old North Carolina family, and without exception, members of the Friends church. Some years after his marriage Thomas Harris accompanied others of his family to the North, the party including his parents and those of his wife, the journey north being made in the early twenties, as has previously been intimated. Their children also were with them, and they stopped in Wayne county for some years moving on to Grant county in 1832 or thereabout. Here they entered land in Franklin township, and Thomas Harris rode horseback all the way to Fort Wayne to make entry of these lands at the land office there. He added lands to his original holdings front time to time, paying $2.50 an acre for much of it, until he finally held four hundred acres in his own right. It is a fact that he lived to see that most of it developed and improved, and he ended his days on one of his farms, on October 4, 1870. His church home was the Deer Creek Monthly Meeting, as this Quaker association was called, and he was always an ardent and sincere Quaker. His first wife died at the old Franklin township home on December 23, 1862, when she was perhaps sixty-three years of age. She was a devout Christian woman and a Quaker also. She was the mother of the twelve children of her husband.

Thomas Harris married a second time, Mrs. Lydia Jay becoming his wife. No children resulted from this union.

Rev. David Harris is the tenth child of nine sons and three daughters born to his parents. All lived to mature years, two sons dying when they had just passed their majority, and neither being married. All the others married and became the parents of children. Those now living are as follows: Mrs. Mary Osborne, a widow living in Jonesboro, and past eighty-six years of age. Zachariane, a resident of Colorado City, Colorado, who has a family. Thomas J., a widower of Eudora, Kansas. David, mentioned later, and Newton, now living on the old homestead in Franklin township, where he has proved himself a practical and successful farmer.

David Harris was born in Franklin township on November 26, 1838. He was reared on the home farm, and there and on his present place of 100 acres in Sections 30 and 31, Mill township, he has spent practically all of his days. His is a fine and well improved place, and it has represented his home since about 1862. The house, a commodious and well appointed ten room dwelling, was built by him and overlooks the old Kokomo pike, while his barns and other buildings of a like nature indicate unmistakably that he is quite as good a farmer as he is a preacher. For it is a fact that Rev. Harris has been an active and enthusiastic laborer and preacher in the church for more than thirty years, and has carried his evangelical work far into the western states. He has done splendid work in the matter of organizing new churches in Kansas and Nebraska, and his influence has been felt perhaps in a wider circle than any other man in the community.

Rev. Harris was married in Center township to Miss Rachel Viand, born in Carroll county, Ohio, on September 29, 1838. She came to Grant county in 1842 with her parents, Harrison and Rachel (Betty) Viand, who settled upon and improved a new farm in Center township, and there lived until they were well advanced in years, death coming to them there. They were members of the United Brethren church.

Mrs. Harris died at her home in Mill township, on March 6, 1910. It should be said that she was one of eleven children of her parents, all deceased with the exception of one son.

To Mr. and Mrs. Harris were born six children, concerning whom brief mention is here set forth as follows: Elmira is the wife of Clinton W. Hacket, a farmer of Mill township, and their children are Leona and George B. Hacket.

Elam H. is now living, but his health is very poor, and his condition has been precarious for some time. He was married in Center township to Clara McNair, and they have one living son, Earl. Another son died in infancy.

Rhoda J. is the wife of Josiah T. Walthall, one of the prominent men of Jonesboro, and of whom a complete family sketch precedes this review of the Harris family.

Ansel R. is engaged in the revenue service and is well known in his branch of the service for the excellent work he has performed. He now has his headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. He married Winnie B. Jones and they have one son, Herbert Harris.

Mary A. is the wife of Harry H. Jay, a farmer of Mill township, and is without issue.

David has been for some years in the Internal Revenue Service, but lately resigned and now makes his home with his father. He married Minnie C. Cox, and their children are Vivian and Gathal. The father and his sons are solid Republicans in their politics and citizens of a worthy type, well thought of in their communities and well worthy of the confidence and esteem their fellows accord to them.

MARION PUBLIC LIBRARY. Prior to the year 1884 there had been no successful attempt to establish a free public library for the city of Marion. There was, it is true, a private library established in 1880 by prominent citizens of the then town of Marion, who were to pay annually $5.00 for its maintenance. The library was located in the old Court House. It was open on Saturday afternoon to subscribers only.

In the year 1884 at the suggestion of Professor Hamilton S. McCrae, then Superintendent of the Marion Public Schools, R. W. Bailey, Elkanah Hulley and Elijah Kitch, then trustees of the school town of Marion, decided to establish a free public library in conjunction with the public schools. On June the 4th of that year the following was spread of record on the minutes of the Board: "On motion it was decided to levy a tax of 1-3 of a mill on the dollar of all taxable property in the school town of Marion for the purpose of establishing a free Public Library in connection with the common schools of the town of Marion." This was the beginning of the present City Library. While the amount of the levy for library purposes has varied at times it has always been maintained.

While the levy for library purposes was made in 1884, the library was not fully established until July, 1888. Professor McCrae was succeeded in the management of affairs April 19th, 1887, by Professor J. K. Waltz, who took charge of the library at its opening and became the librarian. He continued in this capacity until he was succeeded by Ida R. Gruwell. Mrs. Gruwell remained in this office for a number of years. It was largely through her efficient work that the library grew to its present dimensions.

The library opened with about 1,000 volumes, most of which had been purchased from the proceeds of a small tax levy. A few, however, were gifts from the Citizens' Library before mentioned, from private libraries and other sources. In 1898 the number of volumes had increased to 5,000. At the present time the number of volumes exceeds 24,000.

For the first four years the library was open to the public only on Saturdays. Since that time it has been open daily except Sunday and from 1895 to 1902 it was open two evenings each week from 7 to 9 o'clock. In September, 1897, the "Open Shelf" system of selecting books was adopted and a public reading room fitted up.

The library first occupied quarters in the Tharp Block, corner Fourth and Branson Streets. In 1889 it was moved to the second floor of the Board of Trade Building on Adams street. In 1890 it was moved to the second floor of the Charles Block on Washington street. In 1891 it was moved to the basement of the High School Building where it remained until 1895 when it was removed to the Mather Block corner Fourth and Branson Streets. In 1897 it was removed to the G. A. R. Hall, 307-311 East Fourth Street where it remained until removed to the new building.

Very early in the history of the library it became evident that it must have a permanent home. The rapid increase in the number of books and the corresponding increase in necessary fixtures made frequent change of location next to impossible. Besides this the Library had grown to such proportions that adequate and convenient quarters for its accommodation could no longer he rented.

The first step towards the consummation of the plans for a new building was taken December 3rd, 1900, when at the regular meeting, all members being present, the Board ordered the following for record in their minutes: ��The matter of a location for a City Library Building was taken up and it was dually decided that the Flinn lot, corner Sixth and Washington streets was most desirable. A report showing the growth of the library and the need of a permanent home was adopted and the consent of the City Council asked to purchase the lot."

At the meeting of December 7th, 1900, the following additional record was made: "The report of this Board to the City Council having been approved and the action of the Council having authorized the purchase of a lot for a library building as requested, it is ordered that the lot on the southwest corner of Washington and Sixth streets be purchased, the consideration being $6,600 less $600 donated by Peter G. Flinn, the owner, and that warrants be issued in payment therefor to the amount of $6,000.

The next step was to secure funds for the erection of the building. To do this the Board first decided to secure through legislation the privilege of issuing bonds. Accordingly a bill was prepared which passed in the legislature being approved and in force February 13th, 1901, authorizing Board of School Trustees, in cities with population of 15,000 and over to issue bonds in any sum not exceeding $100,000 for the purpose of erecting buildings for library and school offices to be used in connection with the common schools of said city.

Before proceeding with the bonds the Board having heard of the generous bequests of Hon. Andrew Carnegie, decided to appeal to him for help. Accordingly a letter was draughted and forwarded to Mr. Carnegie, asking aid to which he quickly responded. The present handsome structure of which every citizen of Marion is justly proud being the outcome.

The library has grown greatly since the new quarters were occupied. The number of volumes is at present more than double the number moved from the little building on Fourth street. Under the present administration many improvements have been added. It is the desire of all in authority to make the library not only attractive to the eye but of real service to the community.

Deb Murray