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No one knows when this
portrait was painted or for whom. It appeared in Charles
Messner's 1967 account "Records of the Kimmel and Related
Families" without a note of its source. This
particular copy of the image came from a 2-½ by 3-½ photo his
son Charles Messner, Jr. took of the original and was last in
possession of Geneva Kimmell of Fort Wayne, IN. None of
Messner's relatives know where he obtained the original photo or
where it is now. According to Messner's publication, the
picture of Michael and that of his son Philip were of both men
in their uniforms in the Polish army.
One clue of the portrait's source is the fact that Charles Messner
included the image with pictures of Michael Kimmel's son Johann
Philip, Philip's grandsons Peter and Henry, and Peter's son
Singleton. This line is not Messner's but that of
Miss Amy Husband Kimmel (1864-1936) of Cape Girardeau, MO, who
actually had 8x10 copies of Philip Kimmel's photos for sale.
A similar though not exact portrait of Johann Philip was in the possession of her uncle Marius Manning
Kimmel, father of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, according to the "Kentucky
Ante-bellum Portraiture," which also says Johann Philip was in the Polish
army. See images of his
son Philip.
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