CANTIDAD:

1000

RESUMEN

David Pulsifer Kimball (Sept. 30, 1833 – Aug. 7, 1923), lawyer and railroad investor, and Clara Millet Bertram Kimball (Sept. 28, 1838- Feb. 25, 1920), suffragist and philanthropist. David Kimball was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four children of David Kimball, a businessman, and Augusta Blanchard Kimball, both from prominent Boston families. Clara Bertram was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the eldest of three daughters of John Bertram, a shipping merchant, and Clarissa Millet McIntire Bertram. Kimball was educated at the Boston Grammar and Latin Schools and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College in 1856.

Immediately after graduating, David Kimball entered the legal profession under the auspices of George H. Preston of Boston, and after one year of legal study at his office, he was admitted to the Suffolk bar. Information on Clara Bertram’s schooling is unknown, but she probably received an education commensurate with her status as an upper middle-class New Englander in the mid 19th century. She married David Kimball in 1858; the couple had four children: John, Clara, David, and Katherine. The elder David Kimball practiced law until 1873 when he retired from his profession to focus on his railroad investments. He served as the treasurer of the Chicago, Iowa, & Nebraska Railroad, and later as president of the Nashua & Lowell Railroad, as well as a director and officer of a number of other railroads. In 1887, Massachusetts Governor Oliver Ames appointed Kimball a state director of the Fitchburg Railroad Co. He was also a Director of the American Loan and Trust Co. of Boston from 1881 to 1906 and a Trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He endowed two scholarships at Harvard, which came to be known as the scholarships of the Class of 1856. Kimball and his wife donated $1000 to the Harvard Summer School for Cuban teachers in 1900. The following year Clara Bertram Kimball donated money to build Bertram Hall, the first permanent dormitory at Radcliffe, in memory of her son, John Bertram Kimball (who died aged 8 in 1868) and in 1906 donated Eliot Hall, in honor of Grace Hopkinson Eliot, wife of Harvard President Charles W. Eliot. Both dormitories are now part of Cabot House at Harvard.

Bertram Kimball was also a leader in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and a collector of fine art who had the “skilled eye” to acquire works of “timeless quality” (Melton) These including two paintings by the French impressionist Claude Monet, “Meadow with Poplars” (1875) and “Valley of the Petite Creuse” (1889) which she purchased in the 1890s. These and 38 other works were bequeathed by David Kimball to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after his wife’s death in February 1920. The Kimball collection in the MFA also includes an 1890 portrait of Clara Kimball by William Closson https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32329 . David Pulsifer Kimball died in 1923.


Further Reading

Bequest of David P. Kimball in memory of his wife Clara Bertram Kimball, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

1. “Cabot House,” https://cabot.harvard.edu/about

2. Melton, Maureen. Museum of Fine Arts Boston Facebook post, May 17, 2020 https://www.facebook.com/mfaboston/posts/10157008463322321

3. “Monet’s Boston Collectors,” Boston Museum of Fine Arts website
https://www.mfa.org/monet-and-boston-lasting-impression/monets-boston-collectors