Ellen Kimball

Ellen Kimball's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Ellen “Nellie” Miranda Kimball was born in Maine in 1854 to Fry M. and Ellen P. Kimball and was the oldest of two children. Fry, who was born in Massachusetts in 1824, worked as a paper maker until the family came to Minnesota in 1856. They settled in Maine Prairie, where Fry was elected one of the town’s first constables and farmed a land claim. While attending the Third State Normal School from 1869 to 1871, Nellie boarded with W.O. and J.A. Thomas in St. Cloud.

After graduating with the school’s first class on June 30, 1871, Nellie moved back with her parents in Maine Prairie, where she may have been a teacher. By 1880, she had moved to Anoka, Minnesota, and taught school there. By 1885, Neillie had married William Kilbourne, and the two moved to Minneapolis. Her parents moved to Minneapolis in 1884, and their houses were next door to each other. William had passed away by 1905, and Nellie moved in with her cousin, Albert Wells, living there until her death on January 26, 1928. She is buried in Minneapolis’s Lakewood cemetery at section 15, lot 329, grave 3.