Owen C. Kimbrough
In a comfortable rural home in Liberty Township resides one of the old soldiers of the Civil war, a veteran who brought tot he business responsibilities of his career the same qualities of efficiency and fidelity which he displayed as a soldier of the Union during the days of the sixties. Mr. Kimbrough has been a resident of Grant County for more than forty years, was for a number of years connected with lumber milling at Fairmount, and is now engaged in the quiet duties of agriculture at his home place in Liberty Township.
Owen C. Kimbrough was born in Clinton County, Ohio, October 3, 1845, a son of Eli and Margaret (Townsend) Kimbrough. Mr. Kimbrough's maternal great-grandfather, Mendenhall, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. The Kimbrough family have been prominent in this section of Indiana since 1867, in which year the parents moved to Liberty Township, and in that vicinity spent the balance of their lives. There was a large family of children, eleven in number, and these have borne honorable parts not only in this part of Indiana, but in various localities and states. The names of the children and their locations are as follows: John T., of Mill Township, Grant Count; Owen C.; Mary, wife of Sam Stewart; Amos H., a resident of the state of Oregon; Zack T., and William B., both of Marion; Thomas J., of Kansas; Martha, wife of James Stewart of Fairmount; Sarah E., wife of jasper Howell, of Wells County, Indiana; Allie A., unmarried; and Clark H., who lives in Oregon.
Owen C. Kimbrough spent his early years on a farm, attending district schools up tot eh time he was eighteen years of age, and in the meantime struggling between his duties at home and his desire to become a soldier of the Union. Finally he could resist the call of patriotism no longer, and enlisted in Company C of the One Hundred and Ninety-Third Ohio Regiment. He served with the Army of the Potomac, during 1864-1865, and was a soldier on the field until the war was over. Coming home with an honorable record as a soldier, he first located in Ohio, and later moved to Richmond, Indiana. He worked as a machinist in Richmond until 1880.
Mr. Kimbrough has served as commander of the Grand Army Post No. 328. In politics he has been a Republican since casting his first vote soon after the war, and has always taken much interest in local politics. His farm, located at the village of Radley, contains seventy acres, and under his management has been brought to a high state of improvement and furnishes a good home and a profitable living for himself and family.
In 1868 he was married at Richmond to Lydia King, daughter of Lorenzo D. and Elizabeth King, and lived there a few years, and in 1872 brought a sawmill outfit into Liberty Township of Grant County, but remained in Richmond, and worked at his trade until 1880. Many of the older residents will remember the Kimbrough Mill at Fairmount, which was conducted as a local institution there until it was burned in 1888.
To the marriage of Mr. Kimbrough were born three children: Lillian, wife of John M. Wright of Jonesboro; Margaret J., wife of Charles Bergan, who lives near Fairmount; and Maude J., who is unmarried, is a graduate of the common schools, and a student in the business college of Marion.
Submitted by: Gina Reasoner