Myron Holly Kimball

In 1856, Kimball was associated with George Iles in a photography studio at 347 Broadway, New York City.[1]

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  "Rebecca, a slave girl from New Orleans"
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  Rebecca - photographed by M. H. Kimball, 477 Broadway, N.Y.
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  Rebecca, an emancipated slave from New Orleans
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  Rosa, a slave girl from New Orleans
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  Rebecca, an emancipated slave from New Orleans
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  Rebecca, a slave girl from New Orleans - photographed by M.H. Kimball, 477 Broadway, N.Y.
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  Photographed by Hope, successor to M.H. Kimball

One of his photos, "Emancipated Slaves Brought From Louisiana by Col. George H. Hanks," is in a collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts a freed man, Wilson Chinn, whose forehead had been branded with the initials of his previous "owner".[2]

As part of a fund-raising project in New Orleans for the Freedmen's Bureau, he made other photographs of freed slaves as well.[3][4]

Kimball also engaged in the real estate business while in New York City and continued in that occupation, with an office on Spring Street, after he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California, near the beginning of 1874. He became partnered with James Chapin, a "gentleman of extensive means" who had recently arrived from Vinton, Iowa. Kimball had "an active identification" at that time with the city's trade and development, according to the Los Angeles Herald.[5]

He was listed as a hotel keeper in the 1879 list of Los Angeles city electors,[6] and the succeeding listing had him as a capitalist.[7]

In the 1880s Kimball was a partner with attorney B.L. Peel as a mining operator, insurance agent and real estate broker in Tombstone, Arizona.[8][9] He was said to possess "rich mines" in Cochise County.[10]

Kimball returned to Los Angeles in late 1881[11] and soon placed his home at 131 New High Street,[12] the Kimball Mansion, on sale as:

The most elegant private boarding mansion in Southern California; contains 18 rooms, fine parlors, large dining room, complete kitchen and laundry; black walnut furniture, Brussels carpets, marble mantels , grates and gas throughout; during the past seven years has enjoyed an extensive first-class patronage.[13]

It was not sold, however, and three years later, this ad appeared:

KIMBALL MANSION REOPENED: Mrs. M. H. Kimball, having retaken charge of the Kimball Mansion, 131 New High street, announces that the Mansion will again be run on first-class principles. Rooms en suite or single, with our without board, at reasonable rates.[12]

In October 1866 one of the guests committed suicide by strychnine.[14]