Biographical Sketch of Jesse Brownback KIMES; Philadelphia Co., PA

Contributed to the PAGenWeb Archives by Diana Smith 
[christillavalley@comcast.net] 

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"Philadelphia, A History of the City and its People; A Record of 225 Years"
Publisher:  S. H. Clark; Philadelphia; 1912.     Vol. 3, page 345
Author, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer
 
JESSE BROWNBACK KIMES

     Jesse Brownback Kimes, president of the firm of J. B. Kimes & Company and 
of the Ontalaunee Slate Manufacturing Company, the former extensive jobbers of 
structural slate, has won for himself a position of leadership in the field of 
business which he occupies. He was born September 26, 1834, at West Pikeland, 
Chester county, Pennsylvania, and is a representative in the fifth generation of 
the descendants of Johanas Keim, a man of German parentage, who was born in the 
Palatinate between France and Germany, and in 1705 crossed the Atlantic, making 
his way to Reading, Pennsylvania. He afterward located in Lee township, near 
Oley, Berks county, where many of his descendants still reside. There his death 
occurred when he had reached an advanced age. John Kimes, the grandfather of 
Jesse B. Kimes, was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, where he spent his 
entire life, the years devoted to business being occupied by the duties of the 
farm. A fall while working in his barn occasioned his death in 1843.
     His son, Samuel Kimes, father of Jesse B. Kimes was born January 4, 1902, 
and devoted his entire life to agricultural pursuits in Chester county on a farm 
which his father had for many years owned and tilled. It was a tract of one 
hundred and forty acres of excellent land situated in West Pikeland township and 
adjoining the Oberholtzer homestead. He was a member of the German Reformed 
church of West Pikeland township and an earnest worker in its different 
activities. In early days his political allegiance was given to the whig party, 
but on its dissolution he joined the ranks of the new republican party, to which 
he afterward adhered, taking a keen interest in political affairs but never 
holding office save those which were forced upon him by his fellow townsmen. He 
died in Chester county in his eighty-seventh year. His wife, who bore the maiden 
name of Katharine Brownback, was a daughter of Henry Brownback, a well known 
farmer of Vincent township, Chester county. Mrs. Kimes was
also an active member of the church to which her husband belonged. In her youth, 
before carriages were largely used, she was an expert horsewoman. Her death 
occurred in Chester county in 1886.
     On the old homestead farm during the usual experiences of life in a rural 
community Jesse Brownback Kimes spent the days of his boyhood and youth. His 
earliest recollection goes back to the year 1839-1840. He remembers events of 
the political campaign of 1840, when General William Henry Harrison was whig 
candidate for the presidency, although he was then but six years of age.  About 
the time that he had reached the school age, free schools were being established 
in Chester county and he pursued his studies at Anselma, his first teacher being 
Thomas Jacobs, while his second teacher was Warwick Martin.  He was about eight 
years of age before he could spell and read out of Comly's, spelling book. 
Later, however, he turned to his studies with alacrity and out-distanced all of 
his classmates. He bore the reputation of being a mischievous boy in school, but 
the abundant vitality and energy of youth which found its vent in mischievous 
performances were later carefully directed into fields of 

usefulness. His early moral training came to him through instruction in the 
Sunday school of St. John's Methodist church and later in St. Matthew's Reformed 
church.  At intervals in his youth he worked upon the home farm and later he had 
the benefit of a term's study in Fremont Academy. He afterward engaged in 
teaching school for three terms, and in the spring of 1856 he sought the broader 
commercial opportunities of the city and secured a clerkship in a forwarding and 
commission house on Broad street above Race in Philadelphia. In the same year he 
cast his first presidential vote, supporting Fremont, and in 1860 he voted for 
Lincoln, since which time he has cast a ballot for every presidential nominee of 
the republican party.
     In 1858 Mr. Kimes embarked in business on his own account on North Water 
street near Vine, in Philadelphia, as a member of the firm of Ginna, Kimes & 
Company. He was engaged in business at Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1860 and 
1861, becoming manager of the Old Dominion Slate Company of that place early in 
the former year. For refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate 
states of America he was imprisoned in McDaniel's negro jail at Richmond, 
Virginia, in February, 1862, and in May following was transferred to Salisbury, 
North Carolina, but in October was sent back to Richmond and for six weeks was 
in Libby prison. He spent altogether about nine months in southern prisons and 
on the 30th of November, 1862, was paroled and sent to Washington, D. C., to be 
exchanged for a Confederate prisoner in the jail there, but the latter had made 
his escape before Mr. Kimes reached the capital. The military government at 
Washington refused to allow him to return to Richmond to fulfill the obligation 
of his parole and President Lincoln gave him a captain's commission in the 
United States Volunteer Army and he was assigned to the One Hundred and Ninth 
United States Colored Infantry, then recruiting in Kentucky. In September, 1864, 
the regiment was transferred to the Army of the James before Petersburg and 
attached to the Tenth Corps, and Captain Kimes was detailed as adjutant general 
of the Second Division. He participated in the campaign that led up to the 
surrender of the Confederate forces at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, and was then 
transferred to the Army of Observation in Texas in June of that year, serving 
there as inspector general of the central district of Texas until appointed 
assistant quartermaster at Matagorda Bay. He was mustered out at Port Lavaca, 
Texas, February 6, 1866.
     Mr. Kimes at once returned to Philadelphia and in the spring of the same 
year organized the firm of J. B. Kimes & Company for the manufacture of 
marbleized slate, which was and is now used in many ways, especially for 
mantels, grates and table tops and wall facings, having the finish and 
appearance of the finest quality of marble. In this business he remained until 
1878, his first location being at Twenty-second and Chestnut streets, where he 
continued for four years, when he purchased the property at 1215 Race street, 
where the establishment was located until they sold out and engaged in the 
quarrying business  at Lynnport, Pennsylvania, in which Mr. Kimes continued for 
ten years. He then went to Slatington, Pennsylvania, where he erected a mill and 
opened a quarry, confining his attention to the conduct of the business there 
for two years. He then began exclusively handling the output of the Lynnport 
mill, and was thus engaged until 1895, when the company controlling the business 
was dissolved and Mr. Kimes, having purchased an interest in the same, formed a 
new company known as the Ontalaunee Slate Manufacturing Company, of which he has 
been president from the beginning. Their output at Lynnport is entirely 
structural slate, although Mr. Kimes is also interested in other quarries that 
produce roofing slate. The present firm of J. B. Kimes & Company, which was 
incorporated and capitalized for forty thousand dollars, does not manufacture 
but conducts a jobbing business, disposing of a large part of the output of the 
Ontalaunee Slate Manufacturing Company and handling all kinds of structural and 
roofing slate, slag, coal-tar products and general roofing materials of this 
character. Mr. Kimes is said by pioneers of the industry to be the oldest living 
slate manufacturer in the state in years of continuous connection with this line 
of business, and it would be difficult indeed to find one better versed on every 
phase of the slate business in relation to both the manufacture and the sales 
departments.
     On the 26th of September, 1866, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, Mr. Kimes 
was married to Miss Evelyn Graham, a daughter of Hamilton and Mary (Curts) 
Graham, of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, a well known family there. Mr. and Mrs. 
Kimes have two children: Horace Graham, secretary of J. B. Kimes & Company; and 
Jessie Evelyn, wife of Dr. Emery Marvel, who is conducting a sanitarium at 
Atlantic City, New Jersey. There is one grandchild, Evelyn Graham Marvel, six 
years of age.
     Mr. Kimes has for fifty-three years been a member of the Masonic fraternity 
and for the past thirty-seven years has held the office of past master of his 
lodge by virtue of which he has been a member of the grand lodge throughout this 
period. He has always been affiliated with Lodge No. 2. A. F. & A. M., the 
oldest American lodge under Masonic jurisdiction, having been organized in 1758. 
He is also a member of the Loyal Legion and Post No. 2, G. A. R., of 
Philadelphia. Both Mr. and Mrs. Kimes are members of the West Hope Presbyterian 
church of Philadelphia, to which he has belonged for the past thirty years. He 
is one of the trustees and takes an active part in all the business affairs of 
the church. His wife. too, was one of its active workers until about seventeen 
years ago. since which time her invalid condition has precluded her
activity in the departments of church work. They are a most highly esteemed 
couple of Philadelphia, aged respectively seventy-seven and seventy-one years. 
Few men of his age display the activity in business that Mr. Kimes does. He 
possesses the vigor of a man of much younger years and manifests in the 
questions of the day the interest of a man in his prime. His is a notable career 
of well earned and well merited success, the logical sequence of earnest effort, 
intelligently directed, and an appreciation for and utilization of the 
opportunities that have been presented in his chosen line of business.