Moses Kimball

Moses Kimball
City of Boston Board of Aldermen
In office 1851–1852
City of Boston Common Council
In office 1850–1851
Massachusetts House of Representatives for the 10th Suffolk District (1864) for the 8th Suffolk District (1867) for the 9th Suffolk District (1876)
In office 1851–1877
Personal details
Born	October 24, 1809 Newburyport, Massachusetts
Died	February 21, 1895 Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Political party	Whig, Republican
Spouse(s)	Frances Lavinia Hathawayr
Children	Margaret Kimball (b. October 19, 1841- d. 14 July 1922).

Moses Kimball (October 24, 1809 – February 21, 1895) was a US politician and showman. Kimball was a close associate of P. T. Barnum, and public-spirited citizen of Boston, Massachusetts.

Kimball was descended from Richard and Ursula Kimball, who came from England to Massachusetts in 1634 and were among the founders of the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Kimball was born in Ipswich to David and Nancy (Stacy) Kimball, and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts but moved to Boston at 15 to seek his fortune. He was ruined first in the "Eastern Land" speculation, and then again in 1833 in his purchase of the New England Galaxy, one of the earliest weekly newspapers of Boston, which was sold after a few months at a serious loss. Kimball married Frances L. A. Hathaway on June 25, 1834, and in 1836 started the New England Printing Company but it collapsed in 1837.

In 1838 Kimball purchased most of the New England Museum, added to it, made arrangements for a lease of the building on Tremont and Bromfield streets (later the site of the Horticultural Hall).

In 1840, Kimball travelled just twenty miles northwest to the new mill city, Lowell, MA and founded the Lowell Museum.

Then in 1841, Moses opened the Boston Museum. The museum, rebuilt in 1846 and 1880, displayed a large number of stuffed birds and animals (later owned by the Boston Society of Natural History), several remains of Greek sculpture (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and several historical portraits by John Singleton Copley. The Museum was immediately successful.

In the late spring of 1842, Kimball traveled to New York City to meet his rival, P. T. Barnum, in person. He brought with him a large oblong box containing a most unusual curiosity: an embalmed mermaid purchased at great price near Calcutta by a Boston sea captain in 1817. If it wasn't a real mermaid, it was a remarkable fraud: the head of a baboon and the upper half of an orangutan was attached to the lower half of a large fish.

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