John Alfred Kimberly

The Fox Cities village that carries his name, and Kimberly Point on Lake Winnebago, both trace to the family that built Wisconsin’s first newsprint mill.

Born in Troy, New York, on July 18, 1838, he was nine when the family settled in Neenah. Pioneer schools and a short, unfinished stretch at Lawrence University in Appleton preceded dry goods, flour, and lumber work. In 1872 he and store partner Havilah Babcock sat down with Charles B. Clark and Franklyn C. Shattuck. Each put in $7,500. They built the Globe Mill and made newsprint, the first mill of its kind in Wisconsin. That is Kimberly-Clark: four Neenah men and a river.

In the first twenty-five years the firm grew from one mill at two tons a day to fourteen mills at 150 tons a day. He was still president when he died in Redlands, California, on January 21, 1928; he was buried at Oak Hill in Neenah. Seven children survived him. Daughter Helen Kimberly Stuart, learning that F.J. Sensenbrenner was quietly buying the tip of Lake Winnebago for a mansion, bought it herself and on June 21, 1929, deeded Kimberly Point to the city “permanently, continuously and forever” as a park. Another daughter, Nancy, married Neenah-born architect George Edwin Bergstrom, who later designed the Pentagon. The mill town kept the surname.