Hon. John Kimball

• The Granite Monthly, Bank Info, 1879
• The Granite Monthly, Hon. John Kimball, August, 1881
• The Granite Monthly, NH Necrology, June, 1913 Death Notice
• History of New Hampshire, Stackpole
• Link to NH Division of Historical Resources - Portrait & writeup

The Granite Monthly, Vol. 3, 1880
Concord in 1879, By John N. McClintock
p. XVIII

Banks
Merrimack County Savings Bank is located in Minot's building, School street.  Lyman D. Stevens is President; John Kimball, Treasurer and Secretary.  About $350,000 are on deposit. 

The Granite Monthly, Vol. IV, No 11, August, 1881
Hon John Kimball, by J. N. McClintock

A stranger in Concord is at first most impressed with its natural beauties, enhanced by the foresight of the fathers of the town.  Nature and art are rarely combined.  Beautiful shade trees are on every hand, as they are in many other of the favored cities of the Union.  Concord is distinctively attractive in its perfection.  The roads and streets are carefully graded; the bridges are substantial and elegant structures; the system of water supply, gas-works, and sewers, unseen, is excellent and complete; the school-houses are appropriate and ornamental; the private and public buildings are well built and neatly maintained; the fire department is exceptionally fine; the property of the city is discreetly acquired, and well cared for; the policy of the city is at once progressive and liberal.

To no one man can be given the credit of accomplishing all these satisfactory results; they are the fruits of unity of purpose of the many, guided by a large, public-spirited policy dictated by a few.  To no one, however, is the city of Concord more indebted for its material advancement and internal improvement during the first quarter century of its municipal existence than to its esteemed citizen, Hon. John Kimball.

The name is a household word in Concord.  It conveys a meaning to the present generation peculiar to itself.  It is the name of a man, who, springing from sturdy yeoman and artisan stock, from the people, has won his way by tireless industry, unblemished integrity, sterling honesty, and sound good sense, to positions of responsibility and prominence.

The Kimball family is one of the oldest in New England.  It sprang from

I.  Richard Kimball, who with his wife, Ursula, and seven children, fled from tyranny in the mother country, braved the dangers of the stormy ocean, landed on the inhospitable shores of an unbroken wilderness and commenced a new life, deprived of the comforts and luxuries of civilization, but blessed with political and religious liberty.  He came from the old town of Ipswich, in the east of England, sailed on the ship Elizabeth, and in the year 1634, at the age of thirty-nine, settled in Ipswich, in the Bay Colony.  The next year he was admitted a freeman, which must be accepted as evidence that he was a Puritan in good standing.  He was the father of eleven children, and died June 22, 1675.  From this patriarchal family most of the Kimballs of New England can trace their descent.

2.  Richard Kimball, son of Richard and Ursula (Scott) Kimball, was born in England in 1623, and was brought to this country by his parents in childhood.  He was a wheelwright by trade; married Mary Gott; was the father of eight children; settled in Wenham, Mass., as early as 1656, and died there May 20, 1676.  The mother of his children died Sept. 2, 1672.

3.  Caleb Kimball, son of Richard and Mary (Gott) Kimball, was born in Wenham, April 9, 1665.  He was a mason by trade; married Sarah ______; was the father of eight children;  settled in Wenham, January 25, 1725. His widow died in Wenham, January 20, 1831.

4.  John Kimball, son of Caleb and Sarah Kimball, was born in Wenham, Mass., December 20, 1699.  He settled on the land purchased by his father in Exeter, N. H., and married Abigail Lyford, February 14, 1722.  She was the mother of six children, and died in Exeter, February 12, 1737.  He afterwards married Sarah Wilson of Exeter, September 18, 1740.  They were the parents of nine children.  The fifteen children of John Kimball were all born in Exeter.

5.  Joseph Kimball, son of John and Abigail (Lyford) Kimball, was born in Exeter, January 29, 1730.  In early life he married and was the father of two children, but was left a childless widower in a few years.  He afterwards married Sarah Smith.  They were the parents of nine children.  In 1793 he moved to Canterbury, and settled on a farm just north of the Shaker's property.  In early life he was stricken with blindness and never looked upon the town of Canterbury, and never saw six of his children.  He died November 6, 1814; his wife died March 1, 1808*(From unpublished History of Canterbury, NH)

6.  John Kimball, son of Joseph and Sarah (Smith) Kimball, was born in Exeter, November 20, 1767; married Sarah, daughter of Benjamin Moulton, of Kensington, November 21, 1793; moved to Canterbury, February 17, 1794; and settled on their homestead just north of Shaker Village, where they resided nearly sixty years.  They were the parents of nine children.  His wife died April 30, 1853.  He died February 26, 1861, reaching the gold old age of ninety-three years.  He was well known throughout central New Hampshire, and did a large business in buying wool.

7.  Benjamin Kimball, son of John and Sarah (Moulton) Kimball, was born in Canterbury, December 27, 1794; married Ruth Ames, daughter of David Ames, February 1, 1820; and settled in Boscawen in the spring of 1824, on the farm known as the Frost place, High street.  In 1830 he removed to the village of Fisherville, where he died July 21, 1834.  He was an active and influential business man.  In 1831 he erected a dam across the Contoocook river, and the brick gristmills standing near the stone factory.  He took an active part in all that was essential to the general and religious welfare of the town.  In March preceding his death he was elected to represent the town in the legislature, but his health was so impaired he was not able to take his seat.

8.  John Kimball,*(From History of Boscawen and Webster.), the subject of this sketch, the son of Benjamin and Ruth (Ames) Kimball, was born in Canterbury, April 13, 1821.  In infancy he was taken by his parents to Boscawen, where in early youth he had the educational advantages which the district schools of the town afforded.  He enjoyed the privilege of attending the Concord Academy only one year, after which he was apprenticed with a relative to learn the trade of constructing mills and machinery.  On attaining his majority, in 1842, his first work was to rebuild the grist-mill near Boscawen Plain.  Afterward he followed the same business in Suncook, Manchester, Lowell, and Lawrence.  In 1848 he was employed by the directors of the Concord Railroad to take charge of the new machine and car shops then building in Concord.  He was appointed master mechanic of the Concord Railroad in 1850, and retained the position eight years, when he relinquished mechanical labor for other pursuits.

As a mechanic Mr. Kimball inherited a great natural aptitude, and has few superiors.  His sound judgment and skill were in constant requisition in the responsible office in the railroad service he held for so many years; and the experience and training there acquired, have been of great value to the city and state, when his services have been demanded by his fellow citizens.  In 1856 Mr. Kimball was elected to the common council of the city of Concord; in 1857, he was reelected and was chosen president of that body.  In 1858 he was elected a member of the state legislature; and was reelected in 1859, serving as chairman of committee on state prison.  From the year 1859 to the year 1862 Mr. Kimball served the city of Concord as collector of taxes and city marshal.  In 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln collector of internal revenue for the second district of New Hampshire, including the counties of Merrimack and Hillsborough; and held the office for seven years, collecting and paying over to the treasurer of the United States nearly seven millions of dollars.

For eleven successive years he was elected moderator of Ward Five, gaining great experience as a presiding officer.

In 1872 Mr. Kimball was elected mayor of Concord, and was reelected to this honorable and respectable office in 1873, 1874 and 1875.

Immediately after Mr. Kimball assumed the duties of this office a severe freshet either carried away or rendered impassable five of the seven wooden bridges spanning the Merrimack and Contoocook rivers.  The work of rebuilding these structures devolved immediately upon him, as superintendent of roads and bridges.  Some were rebuilt, and such bridges as were manifestly insecure were replaced by solid, substantial, and beautiful structures, which defy the wear and tear of ordinary travel, and were built for generations yet unborn.  The Federal bridge and the bridge at Fisherville, both of iron, are monuments of his progressive ideas.  During his administration the system of water supply from Long Pond was carried on to successful completion, and the purest of water has since been at the command of every citizen.  This work required a large sum of money, which was so carefully expended that no one has ever felt the burden save as a blessing.  The fire department was invested with new dignity by the city government during those years.  The firemen had their demands for appropriate buildings fully satisfied, and are proud, as is the whole city, of the beautiful Central Fire Station, and other buildings of the department. which compare favorably with any in the country.  Blossom Hill Cemetery was doubled in size to meet the demands of the future; the main thoroughfares leading through the city were graded and improved; new school-houses were built, and old ones repaired and renovated; substantial stone culverts replaced their primitive wooden apologies, which had answered for years; the credit of the city was given to foster railroad interests, which in turn would add to the wealth, importance, and business of the city of Concord.

Aside from his mechanical skill, Mr. Kimball long since won the enviable reputation of an able and successful financier.  In 1870, upon the organization of the Merrimack County Savings Bank, he was elected its treasurer and has held the office ever since.  The confidence of the people in the bank is evinced by the half million of dollars deposited in its keeping; and its successful management is shown by its regular dividends, fair surplus, and good financial standing.  To its treasurer in no small degree is due the success of any banking institution.

On the subject of western investment Mr. Kimball is considered very good authority.

To him for many years has been intrusted (sic) the settlement of estates, the management of trust funds, and the care of the property of widows and orphans.  As treasurer of the New Hampshire Bible Society and Orphans' Home, he has given to those institutions the benefit of his financial experience.

For the benefit of the city of Concord the mechanical skill and financial ability of Mr. Kimball were fully exercised.  During his term of office as mayor he was one of the water commissioners, ex-officio, and president of the board in 1875.  He was subsequently appointed a water commissioner in 1877 for a term of three years; reappointed in 1880, and has been president of the board since his first appointment.

Upon the death of Hon. Nathaniel White, Mr. Kimball was appointed president of the Concord Gas-Light Company.

What little credit is due a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1876 is his.  He represented the fifth ward in Concord, and served the Convention acceptably as chairman of its finance committee.

The demand for a new state prison in unison with the humanitarian ideas of the age, culminated, in the year 1877, in an act of the legislature, providing for the erection of a new state prison, and granting for the purpose a very moderate appropriation, hedged in by every possible safeguard.  The governor, Benjamin F. Prescott, with the advice of his council, immediately upon the passage of the law appointed John Kimball, Albert M. Shaw and Alpha J. Pillsbury, commissioners to carry into effect the provisions of the act.  Upon these commissioners has devolved for the last four years the duty of constructing the massive pile of buildings known as the new state prison, commodious for the officers, convenient for the contractors, humane and comfortable for the inmates, acceptable to the authorities and the people, and within the limits of the appropriation.  Mr. Kimball was appointed chairman of the board.

In the autumn of 1880 the structure was appropriately dedicated to its future uses by fitting ceremony; and to the governor and council were given the keys of a finished establishment.  Every dollar appropriated was wisely and judiciously expended; contractors were justly dealt with, and fairly performed their duty; not a dollar was wasted.  The result is a pride to all connected with the great enterprise.

In 1880, when the Manchester and Keene Railroad was placed in the hands of the court, Mr. Kimball was appointed Chief Justice Doe one of the trustees.

In November, 1880, Mr. Kimball was chosen senator from District No. 10, and upon the organization of the legislature in June, 1881, he was elected to the office of president of the senate, in importance the second office in the state.  As presiding officer he is dignified, courteous, and impartial.  He carried to the position a fund of information, a wealth of experience, controlled by sound judgment and strong convictions.

Politically, Mr. Kimball is a Republican; for fifteen years, since 1863, he has been treasurer of the Republican state committee.  He received his political convictions from his father and grandfather, who were staunch Whigs, the elder being a great admirer of Gov. John Taylor Gilman.  With him right takes precedence of policy.  It requires no finesse to know on what side he is to be found.  In his dealings he is upright and downright; he has confidence in himself and in his own judgment, an it is hard to swerve him.  He is frank and free in his general intercourse, bluff and often brusque in manner, but never discourteous.  He is a man of very large and progressive views and actuated by the most conscientious motives.  His character for integrity is without blemish and as firmly established as the Granite hills.

In 1843 he joined the church at his old home in Boscawen, and ever since has affiliated with the Congregationalists.  For many years he has been a member of the South Congregational church of Concord.  He is eminently a man of affairs, of acts, not words.  His reading is of a scientific character, enlivened by genealogical and historical research.

In person Mr. Kimball is of commanding presence and muscular figure, inclined to be spare, but of apparently great physical powers.

In private life he is a devoted friend, a kind neighbor, an esteemed citizen, and a charitable, tolerant, self-reliant man.  His house on State street is indeed, a home, where the inborn culture of the owner is apparent.

In early manhood, May 27, 1846, Mr. Kimball was joined in marriage to Maria H. Phillips of Rupert, Vermont.  Their only child, Clara Maria Kimball, born March 20, 1848, was married June 4, 1873, to Augustine R. Ayers, a successful merchant of Concord. Three children, Ruth Ames Ayers, John Kimball Ayers and Helen McGregor Ayers call Hon. John Kimball grandfather.

The Granite Monthly
New Hampshire Necrology
June, 1913

Hon John Kimball, prominent for more than half a century in the public life of the City of Concord and the State of New Hampshire, died June 1, 1913, at his home on State Street, after a brief illness, at the age of 92 years.

Mr. Kimball was born in Canterbury, NH, April 13, 1821, the son of Benjamin and Ruth (Ames) Kimball.  While a child his parents removed to Boscawen, and in the schools of that town, supplemented by a year's attendance at the old Concord Academy, he obtained his early education, which was broadened by the practical experience of a long and busy life, so that the honorary degree of Master of Arts, given him by the Dartmouth College in 1882, was, indeed, most worthily bestowed.

He learned the trade of a millwright in youth, and followed the same successfully for several years; but in 1848 he took charge of the Concord Railroad shops, and two years later was made master mechanic, holding the position till 1858.  He was elected to the Common Council of Concord in 1856; was president of that body in 1857; representative from Ward 5 in 1858 and 1859; city marshal of Concord and collector of taxes from 1859 to 1862; collector of internal revenue for the Second New Hampshire District from 1862 to 1869; mayor of Concord from 1872 to 1875, inclusive; was appointed chairman of the commission to build the new State prison, October 28, 1880, and completed the work to the satisfaction of all; was a member of the State Senate in 1881-82, and president of that body.  He was treasurer of the Merrimack County Savings Bank from its organization in 1870, till the death of the president, Lyman D. Stevens, whom he succeeded, holding that office till his death.  He had holden almost numberless other positions of financial and fiduciary responsibility; was a leading member of the South Congregational Church of Concord, and prominent in all its activities, and was long actively connected with the Republican party organization in city and State, serving for twenty-five years as treasurer of the Republican State Committee.

Mr. Kimball married, May 27, 1846, Maria Phillips of Rupert, Vt.  They had one child, Clara Maria, wife of Augustine R. Ayers.  Mrs. Kimball died December 22, 1894.  October 15, 1895 Mr. Kimball married Miss Charlotte Atkinson of Nashua, who, with his daughter, survive him.  A comprehensive and detailed sketch of Mr. Kimball's long and useful career appeared in the Granite Monthly for April, 1912.

History of New Hampshire
By. Everett S. Stackpole
Vol. 5, Page 163-4

HON. JOHN KIMBALL, eldest child of Benjamin and Ruth Ann (Ames) Kimball, was born April 13, 1821, in the town of Canterbury, New Hampshire.  At the age of three years, 1824, he went with his father to the town of Boscawen, and at the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to his cousin, William Moody, to learn the trade of millwright.  In 1848 he took charge of the new machine and car shop of the Concord Railroad at Concord, New Hampshire, and in 1850 was made master mechanic, a position he held for eight years.  He became actively identified with various important interests, and was for many years treasurer of the Merrimack County Savings Bank, and a director of the Mechanics' National Bank in Concord; president and treasurer of the Concord Gas Light Company, to which he was elected in 1880; and was a director in the Concord Republican Press Association.  he was ever deeply interested in charitable and religious institutions, and was active in his aid to the New Hampshire Odd Fellows' Home and the Centennial Home for the Aged, of both of which he was president, and the New Hampshire Orphans' Home and the New Hampshire Bible Society, of both of which he was treasurer.  He became a member of the South Congregational Church of Concord by letter, June 28, 1849, and was one of the committee of nine that built the present house of worship of that society.  For thirteen years he was a deacon of the church.

Mr. Kimball was conspicuously useful in the public service both at home and in the State-at-large, and the city in which he resided owes much of its advancement to his wise and long continued effort.  In 1856 he was elected to the Common Council of the city of Concord, and when he was re-elected in the following year he was chosen to the presidency.  From 1859 to 1862 he served as city marshal and collector of taxes.  He was elected to the mayoralty in 1872, and the efficiency of his administration finds evidence in his re-election to three consecutive terms following.  During this period the system of water supply from Long Pond was successfully completed under his immediate direction as president of the board of water commissioners.  During his administration as mayor one wooden and two iron bridges were built across the river within the city limits, and the fire department was provided with new buildings and apparatus.

In 1858 Mr. Kimball was elected to the House of Representatives of the State of New Hampshire, and again in 1859.  In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him collector of internal revenue for the Second District of New Hampshire.  This highly important position he held for a period of seven years, during which time he collected and paid over to the treasurer of the United States the sum of nearly seven millions of dollars, and keeping so accurately the complicated accounts indispensable to this immense business that their final auditing at his retirement was promptly accomplished and without inaccuracy to the amount of a dollar.  In 1876 Mr. Kimball was elected to the convention for the revision of the State Constitution, and he bore an active part in the deliberations of that body, and aided in formulating some of the most important provisions in the new organic instrument.  In 1877 he was appointed by the governor one of the three commissioners of whom was committed the erection of the new state prison.  In 1880 he was appointed by the Supreme court of the State one of the three trustees of the Manchester and Keene Railroad.  In November of the same year he was elected to the State Senate, and at the beginning of the session received the high honor of being elected president of that body.  Had he so willed, his name would have been added to the list of governors of New Hampshire.

Mr. Kimball was an original Republican, aiding in the formation of the party in 1856, under the first standard bearer, John C. Fremont, and from that time was one of the most steadfast of its supporters.  He frequently sat in the State and other conventions of the party, and enjoyed the intimate friendship and confidence of many of the most eminent statesmen of his day, and particularly during the Civil War period, when he rendered all possible aid, by effort and means, to the administration of President Lincoln in its gigantic struggle for the preservation of the Union.  Of cultured mind and reflective habits of thought, Mr. Kimball was deeply informed in general affairs and in literature, with a particular inclination toward historical and genealogical research, and his attainments found recognition at the hands of Dartmouth College, which in 1882 conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts.  entirely regular habits of life and total abstinence from stimulating beverages and drugs (through conviction of conscience as well as for other reasons) preserved to him excellent physical powers, and his form was tall and erect, and his presence commanding.  While firm and decided in his views, he was ever genial and courteous, and his wealth of information and fine conversational powers made him a welcome addition to the most polished circle in the state.

Mr. Kimball married (first) May 27, 1846, Maria Phillips, daughter of Elam Phillips, of Rupert, Vermont.  She died December 22, 1894.  Of this union there was born one child, Clara Maria.  Mr. Kimball married (second) October 15, 1895, Charlotte Atkinson, of Nashua, New Hampshire.  Mr. Kimball's death occurred on June 1, 1913, in the ninety-third year of his age.