JAMES B. KIMBALL, commercial traveler, is a native of Monroe County, N. Y. His parents moved, when he was a youth, to Maumee City, Lucas Co., Ohio, where they resided until their death. Our subject, at the age of twenty-two, went to Akron, Ohio, and learned the machinist's trade, where he remained from 1842 until 1850, engaged at mechanical work. In 1850, he went to Defiance, Ohio, and started a foundry and machine-shop, which is in successful operation at the present time. Mr. Kimball conducted these works for three years, at the expiration of which he removed to Adrian, Mich., and was in the machine-shops of the Michigan Southern Railroad for three years. He next embarked in the mercantile trade, running a retail grocery house there for one year, and, in 1857, commenced his career as a commercial traveler, and in which he has passed the last quarter of a century, for the past twenty-three years without losing a day's time. He began traveling for a Toledo grocery house, with whom he continued two years; thence to Cleveland, Ohio, representing a boot and shoe house for over six years, and then representing a New York house in the same line of trade for nearly the same period. In April, 1871, he again became the representative of a Toledo grocery house, and in that line of business he is still engaged. Mr. Kimball has traveled over about the same territory during his career--Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. He selected Kendallville as his home in 1861, where he has been an enterprising and valued citizen ever since, taking an active interest in the advancement of the city and in building it up. He has served upon the City Council, and upon the School Board, being a member of the latter at the time the schoolhouse was built. Mr. Kimball is one of the prominent and leading members of the I. O. O. F. of the State of Indiana. He was admitted to Summit Lodge in Akron, Ohio, in 1845, and was a charter member of Apollo Lodge, No. 61, of Middlebury, Ohio. Since coming to Indiana, he has filled all of the offices of the Grand Lodge of the State, in 1876 being Grand Master, and in 1877 and 1878 represented the Grand Lodge of the State at the meeting of the Grand Lodge of the United States, held at Baltimore. In Masonry, he is a Knight Templar. He was admitted in Toledo April 21, 1858; demitted and joined at Kendallville in 1861. He was one of the charter members of Apollo Commandery,No. 19, of Kendallville and in 1877 and 1880, during the triennials at Cleveland and Chicago, was Eminent Commander. He is also a member of the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Kimball was united in marriage, December 17, 1844, with Miss Sophia D. Tyler, a native of Summit County, Ohio. They have one child--Charles D.
Counties of La Grange and Noble, Indiana, Historical and Biographical, Chicago: F. A. Battey & Co., Publishers, © 1882, Part 2, p. 306-307.
Transcribed by Denise Wells, May 2013.