Oshkosh

Caroline Howe Kimball

When this picture was taken
Carrie looked rather more formidable
Than she was reputed to be, but then
She had a position to maintain in Oshkosh.

The town fathers recognized that Carrie
Had quite a refined education;
Much more than the rough-hewn pioneers
Of a frontier town in Wisconsin.

So they asked her to start a high school;
She hired and in some cases trained the teachers.
The doors opened in 1869, and is now known
As Oshkosh West High School.

Tante

Lillian Kimball Stewart graduated at nineteen
From Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
She taught English at her mother's school, then
At the normal school, now the U. of Wisconsin in Oshkosh.

She was always referred to by her nephews as "Tante."
Norman and Charles were close to her personally.
Tante wed old Frank Stewart late in life;
Immensely pleased to be a married woman.






Ma and Pa Kimball

Charles William Kimball didn't like his name,
So he rearranged it to William C. Kimball.
Became a court reporter when that post was
Much more than stenography.

He read for the law and was admitted to the
Bar of Winnebago County in 1888.
My son, Steven the lawyer, has the certificate
Hanging in his office in Sacramento.

Among the personal memories of my father
Was the sight of Winnebago Indians sleeping
Next to the furnace of their home in Oshkosh.
William C. was their agent to the government.

His wife, Katharine Kitz, came from a German family.
My uncle, Norman, remembered that the uncles spoke German.
The name must be a shortening of a longer Deutsche Namen,
Following the introductory, "Kitz."

My father never spoke of his mother.
I gather she was a strict disciplinarian.
He did say that she died in his arms in 1911,
When he was only twenty-one.

Mantheno Crosby Kimball moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Dying young in 1895; he was a "railroad man."
His line continues in the Grand Rapids area,
From a son named Richard, the most common Kimball name.