Archives West Finding Aid

Albert B. Kimball was born July 2, 1868, in Ithaca, New York, the son of James Lawrence Kimball, a homeopathic physician. At the age of twenty Albert began work as a telegraph operator and station agent on the Elmira, Courtland, and Northern Railway. In 1892 he moved to Moorhead, Minnesota, to work for the Northern Pacific Railway as a freight clerk. He was transferred and promoted to city ticket agent for the Northern Pacific in Butte, Montana in 1902, and then in 1912 to Missoula where he worked until his retirement in 1937. In 1904, he married Hilma Hanson, daughter of Peter and Anna Hanson.

Peter Hanson was born in Voxtorp, in the province of Halland, Sweden, on March 25, 1842, the son of a farmer. After completing his compulsory military service, Peter immigrated to the United States in 1869, settling in Batavia, Illinois, where he worked in a stone quarry. In 1872 or 1873 he moved to Colorado, and got a job as a furnace man in the Boston and Colorado Smelting Company's smelters, first at Black Hawk and later at Alma. In Colorado he met Anna Gustafsen also a native of Sweden who had come to America in 1872. They were married in Black Hawk in 1874. In 1879 Boston and Colorado general manager Henry Williams opened a new smelter in Butte, Montana Territory. Hanson was hired as foreman at the new Colorado Smelting and Mining Company plant, a job he held until his retirement in 1907. In the 189Os Hanson owned a creamery business in Stevensville in partnership with L. Johnson. Peter Hanson and his wife had two sons, Harry and Benjamin, and one daughter, Hilma. Peter died in 1927 and Anna in 1937.

Benjamin Hanson, youngest son of Peter and Anna Hanson, was born in Butte in 1881, and graduated from Butte High School in 1899. He worked as an electrician for many years in Butte and was a member of the Masons. He died in Seattle on July 17, 1941.

Hilma Hanson was born in Alma, Colorado, November 2, 1877, and moved with her family to Butte in 1879. She graduated valedictorian from Butte High School in 1896 and immediately got a job teaching at the one-room school at the mining camp of Coloma. She later taught at Garfield School in Butte and at the Butte Business College. In 19O4 she married Albert B. Kimball. They had three daughters Mary Hilma, born May 2, 1905; Anne Charlotte, born July 23, 1907; and Martha Alberta, born December 30, 1912. In 1912 the family moved to Missoula. Hilma was active in the National Conference of Catholic Women, and the Alpha Phi Mothers Club. She also did extensive writing, including a major article on the history of Butte in the Butte Miner in 1926. She died on December 1, 1942.

Mary Kimball, the oldest daughter of Albert and Hilma Kimball, graduated from Missoula High School in 1923 and from the University of Montana in 1928. She taught home economics, first at Plentywood and later in Great Falls. She then went to work as a home economics educator for the Montana Power Company, teaching customers how to use their new electric appliances. She left the Montana Power Company in 1943 to take a course in restaurant management in Minnesota. She stayed on in Minneapolis to work for the Pillsbury Mills, at first as a food research home economist and later as associate director for new products. Apart from her career, Mary Kimball was a song-writer, playwrite, and amateur actress, appearing in many community theater productions in Great Falls in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She died in 1970.

Anne Kimball, the second daughter of Albert and Hilma Kimball, graduated from the University of Montana in 1929, and pursued a laboratory technician career at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, from 1929 to 1932. She left the clinic to work for the Minnesota State Department of Health as a bacteriologist and later as head of their special laboratory studies department. In 1940 she received a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1951 until 1953 she worked for the World Health Organization in Rangoon, Burma, as a serologist. In 1963 she accepted an appointment to the faculty of the Cornell Medical College in New York City. She received the University of Montana's Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 1967.