Among the Enemy: A Michigan Soldier’s Civil War Journal

1. Off to War: September 22–December 15, 1861

1 + Off to War september 22–december 15, 1861 William Horton Kimball was born near Hector, Schuyler County, New York,on December 1,1842.He was the sixth child of John and Elizabeth (Horton) Kimball. Both parents were native New Yorkers. The family also included William’s siblings Anna (born 1827), Augustus (1830), Daniel (1834), Rachel (circa 1838), Amelia (1840), and Samantha (1848). Both Daniel and Rachel died young. William was raised in the agricultural community around Hector, dividing his time between the original family farm and a second one his father bought in 1853 in nearby Burdett. Young Kimball attended local schools during the winter months. As he later recounted, this arrangement provided him with “a rather limited chance of obtaining an education which I always regretted but have the satisfaction of reflecting to know that my time was generally well improved while at school.”1 Like so many others, John Kimball saw new opportunities to the west and decided in the fall of 1858 to move his family to Michigan. He purchased a farm in Jackson County for the then considerable sum of $2,200 and sold both farms in New York—the original one near Hector to his oldest son, Augustus. Anna and Augustus remained in New York with their young families, while John, Elizabeth, and their youngest children William, Amelia, and Samantha moved to Michigan. 1. “Biographical Sketch,” William H. Kimball Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. 6 chapter 1 William made the trip separately,in charge of the family’s household furniture,wagons,and livestock.Leaving on March 19,1859,he journeyed by lake steamer from Dunkirk, New York, to Detroit, and then overland to Jackson County. Young Kimball made good time and arrived at the new farm on March 23, a week ahead of the others.This must have been a grand adventure for the sixteen-year-old. The rest of the family had a much easier journey, traveling by train to Niagara Falls and then on to Detroit by steamer and Jackson by rail. A local livery stable and hired driver took them the remaining few miles to their new home in a cold rain. The Kimball family’s new farm was located in section 3 of northern Spring Arbor Township, near the small post village of Sandstone and a few miles west of Jackson.The farm, including about 125 acres in cultivation, had been developed by horticulturalist Reuben Grant and already contained several structures.The Kimballs started immediately to improve upon what they had purchased, and when a census enumerator visited the farm in 1860, its value was estimated at $5,000. One highlight of William’s prewar life in Michigan was attending boarding school, housed in the buildings originally constructed for Michigan Central College in Spring Arbor. He was a student in the winter term of 1859–60. Near the close of the term, the structure housing the male students burned down and William and roommate Henry Fuller fled from the burning building, possessions in hand.This was the end of his formal education.2 After secession and the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called on the loyal state governors for seventy-five thousand men to serve for ninety days to suppress the rebellion.Among the first to go from Michigan were the Jackson Grays, a prewar militia company under the command of Captain William Withington. This company was heavily engaged in the defeat at Bull Run on July 21, 1861, and Withington and several others were carried south to Richmond as prisoners of war. 2. Ibid. A Baptist college had been started at Spring Arbor, but it moved in 1853 to Hillsdale. The buildings remained largely vacant until the Free Methodist denomination established the forerunner of Spring Arbor University in 1873. It is not clear who was running the boarding school that William Kimball attended. Kimball’s Michigan, 1861. (Map by Sherman Hollander) 8 chapter 1 In the weeks and months that followed, military companies continued to form throughout the North, raised with the new and grim understanding that this war would not be won in a few short months with one decisive battle. Kimball’s journal begins in September as he decides to enlist alongside friend and neighbor Schuyler McAlister. Though McAlister soon changed his mind and withdrew from the roster, many of Kimball’s prewar friends and neighbors did enlist...