Captain Louis Kimmel, 32nd Indiana
By Michael A. Peake

Louis Kimmel was born April 21, 1828, in the town of Roedgen, Hesse Darmstadt, Germany. To escape persecution, Kimmel immigrated with his family, including his mother Catherine, to the United States from Roedgen on August 8, 1854. Relocating to Lafayette, Indiana, Kimmel found employment at the Huber Foundry, but soon after arriving, five members of his family died from Asiatic cholera that swept through the town, leaving Kimmel and his son John alone.

He went to work for the Monon Railroad out of the New Albany, Louisville and Chicago Depot where he remained for several years. In June 1857, Kimmel wed Mary Pfuhl, and in 1859, he took over as editor and publisher of the German newspaper Der Beobachter. He operated the paper as the Indiana Post until shortly after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.

Kimmel helped organize recruits at Lafayette, Indiana for what became Company “G,” 32nd Indiana. He mustered in as 2nd lieutenant on August 24, 1861, and was appointed captain of Company “B” October 20, 1862. Kimmel resigned in May 1863, due to disability from a wound received at Stones River. He died in the evening of March 24, 1910, at the home of his daughter in Washington and was buried at Greenbush Cemetery in Lafayette, Indiana.

Portrait by P. W. Wolever, 84 Ball’s Block, Columbia Street, Lafayette, Indiana.

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Library of Congress: LC-USZ62-128575