Sunday, November 16, 2008

Kimble Graham

Kimble Graham, also known as "Kimball," was born 1824 in Essex County, New York.

In 1850 there was a 24-year-old engineer named Kimball Graham, born in New York living in Northfield, Summit County, Ohio, with his wife Maria (b. 1823 in Ohio) and their children, all born in Ohio: Otis (b. 1843) and twins William and Mary (7 months old).

Kimble was married to a woman possibly named Pline (b. 1814 in New York), and they had at least three children: Reuben (b. 1843), Orval (b. 1845) and Mary E. (b. 1853).

Kimble and his wife moved to Ohio before 1853 but by 1860 Kimble was working as a farmer and machinist living in Hopkins, Allegan County with his wife and children.

Kimble stood 5’9” with blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion, and was 37 years old and probably still living in Allegan County or possibly in Georgetown, Ottawa County when he enlisted in Company I on May 13, 1861. (Company I was made up largely of men from Ottawa County, particularly from the eastern side of the County.)

By late August of 1861 Kimble was hospitalized in Annapolis, Maryland, for reasons unknown. On August 21, Kimble wrote to General Mansfield, commanding the hospital at Annapolis, Maryland, complaining about his doctor and seeking a discharge from the army. Doctor Burns, he wrote, “may be a good doctor, [but] as far as I can say about him in that case I can say to you that he keeps men soldiers here two or three weeks and won't fill out their papers for discharge if we ask him to fill out the papers he says I put you in the guardhouse if you don't stop talking.” Graham further claimed that Burns “says I have no authority to make out your papers, you have to get your captain to fill the papers out, and I been examined by the doctors four weeks ago last Monday and he said I can't never be a well man to do duty. . . .”

Graham also complained about the living conditions, that the food was inadequate, that they are confined to the hospital and all they have to eat and drink is “bitter coffee and four ounces bread to eat” and “at noon we have bread and soup and this for dinner.” He thought he should “be discharged soon for I have the [rheumatism] and bunches of blood veins on my legs and disabled for working or running fast if you could send a man here that can help the sick men away it would be a good cause to your soldiers which is suffering here so bad the[re] is a good many here not be able to do duty and it is too bad to keep them so long here suffering so much pain if we buy anything to eat to keep from starving he will put us in the guardhouse and that is the way we are nursed here they all get bread and water to drink that is all we get to in that place to eat.”

He was discharged for chronic rheumatism and varicose veins on October 11, 1861, at Fort Richardson, Virginia.

It is not known if he ever returned to Michigan.

He was probably living in Wisconsin when he married his second (?) wife, Sarah (b. 1829), on April 26, 1869 in Pierce County, Wisconsin. (She had been married once before to a man named Jackson.) By 1880 he was working as a farmer and living with his wife and stepchildren in Spring Lake, Pierce County, Wisconsin.

In 1873 he applied for and received a pension (no. 568570).

Kimble probably died in about 1886 and probably in Wisconsin.

In any case his widow was living in Wisconsin when she applied for and received a pension (no. 459660).

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