By Phineas Upham Hannibal Kimball was instrumental in post Civil-War reconstruction. He was born Oxford County, Maine to family of Methodist wheel-wrights. The fifth boy of 10 children, he had the good fortune of being born to a highly regarded wheel-wright named Peter Kimball. The family lived in relative modesty, and he stayed in the carriage business until after the Civil War. The business prospered for most of that time, but the Civil War had a depressing effect on many local economies. Individuals and businesses couldn’t pay loans they’d