Kimball, William Wallace

  General Notes:

Per Vic Jeter: On April 9th, 1870 John and Alice Kimball sold
their property in section 10 of Leonidas Township to John C.
Kinne and then began their jou rney to Kansas. (St. Joseph
County, Michigan, deedbook #53, page 150). they may have spent
some time in Missouri on the way. I could not find them, the
William Wallace Kimball family, nor the Thaddeus Rulison
families on the 18 70 census for any of the three states.
During the Civil War Pvt. William W. Ki mball served from
10/5/1863 to
6/2/1865 in Co. B of the 7th Michigan Infantry . He participated
in the
battles at Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, Co ld Harbor,
and Ream's
Station, and spent the last few months of the war at Do uglas
Hospital,
Washington, D.C. My uncle, William T. Jeter, remember his
g randfather's war
experiences: "My first memories of him were times I sat on h is
lap listening
to war stories. I heard some of them several times and wit h
great interest.
He tried to assure himself that he had never killed anyone . He
admitted he
fired shot in the direction of the enemy but he wasn't cer tain
whose bullets
were doing the killing. He talked about hardships of sol diers
on both
sides. He thought the South fought harder and with less and
s uffered more.
He talked about fighting eight days with nothing to eat but
"h ardtack".
Another time he an six others were captured and locked in a
nearly full
icehouse and apparently forgotten. All escaped cold and hungry
when a
cannonball knocked a hole in the roof on the third day of their
captivity.
Un cle Bill continued: "All my folks were Republicans except
Grandfather
Kimball , a Democrat, who refused to argue politics. Grandma
Kimball could
not under stand why grandpa who had fought so long and hard with
General
Grant could ch oose to be a Democrat with all the "rebels" in the
community.
Grandfather Wil liam Wallace Kimball was a yankee born in
Michigan August 22,
1843. He died in St. Paul, Arkansas, August 25, 1918. He had a
religion of
high morality , integrity and adherence to the golden rule. He
was a good
man and helpful neighbor. In a settlement where most people
thought it an
essential mark of good citizenship to belong to one or more of
the available
fraternities he j oined nothing. He unpretentiously went his way
and had no
quarrel with thos e who differed with him."
-------------
After the war, William W. Kimball far med, operated a wagon
transport system,
a stone quarry and livery stables. The cornerstone for the
first Wichita
bank came from his quarry.
He and his family lived in 1870s and 1880s in or near several
Kansas
communities ---- Va lley Center near Wichita, Attica and Sharon
in what was
then Harper County, O ak City which was about 5 miles from what
is now
Liberal, and near Coffeyvill e, just before moving to Arkanas.
The family
lived briefly in the Oklahoma to wn of Tyrone near the state line
and south
of Liberal, KS. In Oak City, he a nd his wife opened the
Occidental Hotel in
preparation for the arrival of th e Rock Island railroad. The
Rock Island
went instead to Liberal and the hotel had to be dismantled and
moved, by
team and wagon, to the new railhead.
The move from Kansas to Madison County, Arkansas was motivated
by the
hardwood l ogging boom in that area in which WWK thought his
mules might
bring in more m oney.

William married Mary Catherine West on 10 Mar 1866 in Arlington Township, Van Burean County, Michigan.