Abel Kimball

KIMBALL, PRETTYMAN, HAYWARD, PHELPS

Posted By: Debbie Gerischer (email)
Date: 7/7/2007 at 11:18:55

A Narrative History
of
The People of Iowa
with
SPECIAL TREATMENT OF THEIR CHIEF ENTERPRISES IN
EDUCATION, RELIGION, VALOR, INDUSTRY,
BUSINESS, ETC.
by
EDGAR RUBEY HARLAN, LL. B., A. M.
Curator of the
Historical, Memorial and Art Department of Iowa
Volume IV
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Inc.
Chicago and New York
1931

ABEL KIMBALL was one of the pioneer railroad men of Iowa. It is important
to remember that the men who manned and directed the first railroad and who
through summer flood and winter blizzard fought long days and nights that these
roads might carry on, deserve a high place on the honor roll of Iowa's
pioneers. Some account of the life and work of Abel Kimball in Iowa is of
particular importance because of his arrival in the state in 1856, and for nearly
fifty years thereafter he was closely and actively associated with the
operation and development of what is now the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway.

When, in 1920, this road commemorated its seventieth anniversary there was
placed on the grounds of the railway company in Davenport a bronze tablet in
memory of Abel Kimball.

Abel Kimball was born in Sanbornton, New Hampshire, December 15, 1822. He
was compelled to go to work at the age of thirteen, and by the time he was
eighteen he had developed a decided taste for mechanical work. Securing
employment in the Locomotive Works at Lowell, Massachusetts, he learned the trade of
machinist. About 1854 he went to the shops of the Western Railroad at
Springfield, Massachusetts, becoming foreman of the work on Baldwin locomotives.
Locomotive building was not merely a routine of precise working and fitting of
metals, as Kipling has reminded us in one of his stories - "A locomotive,
next to a marine engine, is the most sensitive thing man ever made."

From building locomotives Abel Kimball was attracted into the field of
railroad operation. Later he was employed by the Connecticut River Railroad,
Cacheco Railroad, and the Newburyport & Georgetown Railroad in Massachusetts,
where he was superintendent. In addition to his mechanical skill he evinced a
marked ability to handle men.

It was 1856 that he was offered the position of master mechanic of the
Mississippi & Missouri Railroad at Davenport, Iowa. This road, the first to
bridge the Mississippi and the first to extend its rails across that historic
stream toward the great western plains, was at that time the last link between
the terminus of the Rock Island Railroad at Rock Island, Illinois, and the Iowa
prairies. Mr. Kimball reached Davenport on November 20, 1856, and
immediately assumed his new duties. Afterwards he was in the habit of saying that in
all his life he had only been out of work during his trip from Massachusetts
to Iowa.

Pioneer days and pioneer railroads called for qualities of leadership found
only in industrious, farseeing men; men with a fixed and steady purpose,
whose faith in the future and in their own resourcefulness could not be shaken.
Such men were those who tamed the western country, and such men were those who
visioned, built and operated Iowa's early railroads.

On these men, of all nationalities, but with a high and common purpose, Iowa
too left her mark, and none of them privileged to spend years of life on
Iowa soil but grew to love the state of their adoption.
This was true of Abel Kimball. As he advanced from rank to rank, from the
Mississippi& Missouri Railroad to the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway,
and from general superintendent of that road to vice president and finally
assistant to the president, his appreciation of Iowa grew. He was a man of few
words, reserved, calm and equable, but he spike always in terms of affection
and admiration for the State of Iowa.

Abel Kimball married Emma Prettyman, of a family that also came to Davenport
in the early '50s. Their son, William H.. Kimball, is a civil engineer and
a native son of Davenport, where he has earned a reputation in his profession
and where he was born February 22, 1873.

William H. Kimball was educated at Davenport, attended the University of
Iowa and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After taking his degree he
was employed as a civil engineer with the Rock Island Railroad Company until
1901. For the past twenty-five years he has carried on a widely diversified
practice as a consulting engineer. Much of his work has been done in
Davenport. He was engineer for and also a member of the Davenport Levee Commission.
He served on the special sewerage commission. Early in 1918 he was called
to Washington to serve under the direction of the United States housing board
and did municipal engineering for the Government until January, 1919. During
1920 and for several years after he was consulting engineer for several
large drainage and development projects in Florida.

He married, in 1900, Miss Nellie Hayward. She was born at Davenport,
daughter of Major E. B. and Ellen (Phelps) Hayward. Her father was born in Essex
County, New York, where the Hayward family were prominent from early Colonial
times. He enlisted in the Fifth New York Cavalry as a private in 1861, was
promoted to captain and finally to brevet rank as major in the Army of the
Potomac. Mr. Hayward moved to Davenport in 1869, and was one of a group of
Davenport men who became conspicuous in the lumber business in the West. At
first he was associated with the well known Lindsay & Phelps Company and later
organized a number of companies of his own, operating in the lumber districts
of the South, West and Northwest.

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Kimball have two children. A son, Herbert H., born
in 1901, graduated from Princeton University and the law department of the
University of Iowa, and is now practicing law in New York. The second son,
William P., born in 1905, graduated with the degree of Civil Engineer from the
Thayer School of Dartmouth College and has since taught engineering at
Dartmouth.