CHAPTER ONE
The Roots of Poverty
(1731–1950s)
A hungry stomach cannot hear.
Jean de la Fontaine
(1621–1695)
Introduction
Poverty leads to powerlessness. Victims of poverty often create
a cycle of poverty for their descendants. Many poor people are not
aware that they are born powerless, destined to live in poverty for
all their lives. For them, life is an unending fight to survive. They
are unable to see beyond the need for food, shelter, and clothing.
They do not have the leisure to reflect upon their condition, to
realize that the edge-of-survival nature of their lives is due to their
powerlessness to make necessary changes.
The desire to avoid the poor is perhaps one of the most effective
ways of keeping them impoverished. Some of my financially
successful family members believed they were not prejudice when
they chose for their family to live in white neighborhoods. They
argued that they just did not want their family to be around poor
people. Social isolation keeps the poor from other resources, optimal
schooling, nutritious food, decent housing, job opportunities,
protection from criminal behavior, and even the knowledge
that those resources exist. Without the knowledge that assistance is
available and the opportunity to access it, the poor remain poor. To
their children, being poor and underprivileged seems normal since
it is all they have ever known. As a result of the isolation of the poor,
children who grow up in poverty have few role models to learn
2 | A Road Less Traveled
from, and the cycle of poverty continues. And, of course, a daily life
of struggling to survive leaves little time for self-improvement and
practicing good citizenship.
The daily struggles of the poor for the necessities of life have
negative effects on society. The poor are often not even required to
pay federal and state income taxes and, in most cases, must depend
on government assistance to survive. Prior to 1966, the poor were
unable to execute their constitutional right to vote because they
could not pay the poll tax.1 The potential of the poor is often lost
because for the most part, early education is not encouraged, and
higher education is not discussed because it’s not understood and
simply out of reach financially. Our healthcare system is strained
because many of the poor cannot afford to visit a doctor for preventive
healthcare and many rely on emergency rooms for treatment
for acute conditions that could have been treated in a doctor’s office
before the disease or condition became acute.
It is difficult to determine the reasons for my family’s extreme
poverty. Was our family dysfunctional because we were poor, or
were we poor because our family was dysfunctional? Solutions to
the problem of poverty become even more elusive the farther down
the family tree one goes. Once poverty sets in, it becomes more difficult
for subsequent generations to pull themselves out of the only
life they’ve ever known.
In the right circumstances, however, growing up poor can make
your adult life amazingly simple. It teaches you to think creatively
to acquire the necessities and to live with less than the necessities
when necessary. You learn to tolerate hardship. You learn to adjust
1 The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) prohibits both Congress
and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a
poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on
August 27, 1962 and was approved by the states on January 23, 1964…The amendment
made the poll tax unconstitutional regarding federal elections. However, it was not until
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, [383 U.S.
663] (1966) that poll taxes for state elections were unconstitutional because they violated
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Twenty-fourth_Amendment _to_the_United_States_Constitution
Dr. Robert H. Kimball | 3
to the consequences of discrimination.
Many like me were born into poverty. There are other ways to
end up in poverty but only a few ways to conquer it. Mine is the
story of both. Fortunately, some of my immediate family members,
like myself, did escape from a life of poverty and received graduate
degrees.
Our Family History Before I Was Born
My great-great-great-grandfather John (born 1731) spent his
life as a farmer in New Hampshire. Around 1815, my great-greatgrandfather
Joseph moved from New Hampshire to Hopkinton,
Massachusetts, and continued to farm. His son Joseph (born 1817)
followed his father into farming. Joseph’s son Marcus (born 1859),
my grandfather, gave up on farming and found a job working in the
shoe-manufacturing business.
Marcus was born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, on October 22,
1859. He married my grandmother, Ellen Moran Temple, who was
16 at the time, on November 22, 1879. After they married, he lived
with his sixteen-year-old wife’s family. Marcus appeared to be a freeloader,
living with others most of his life.
After Ellen died in 1895, Marcus lived with his mother and
stepfather. He tried marriage a second time and married Lizzie
Warden on November 17, 1897, but it ended after only a year.
After his stepmother died, he lived in Ashby, Massachusetts, with
his son, Henry, and in 1940 in Milford, New Hampshire, with
his son, Leslie (my father). Marcus died on October 26, 1944, of
arteriosclerosis2 at an institution for destitute people in Goffstown,
New Hampshire.
My father, Leslie Morton Kimball, was born in Framingham,
Massachusetts, on December 9, 1889. Leslie was six when Ellen, his
mother, died of pneumonia on January 20, 1895, at the age of 31
2 The hardening of the arteries, blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients
from your heart to the rest of the body. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/
arteriosclerosis-atherosclerosis/DS00525
4 | A Road Less Traveled
after having given birth to four children.
My mother, Nancy May Smith (“Nannie”), was the child of
sharecroppers. Her parents, my grandfather John Harvey (“Harvey”)
Smith (born 1888) and my grandmother Sarah Elizabeth (“Lizzie”)
Smith (born 1892), had been given permission to occupy a dilapidated
cabin in exchange for helping with the landowner’s crops.
Harvey was one of six children, five boys and one girl, born
to Andrew Smith (born 1850) and Polly Smith (born 1853).3
Lizzie, Nannie’s mother, was a Native American whose parents were
most likely from the Monacan group of Indians in West Virginia.
In Virginia in 1914, the registrar of statistics, Dr. Walter Ashby
Plecker, directed that birth certificates for all Indians be changed
to reflect their race as colored. In 1924, this directive was made
into law in the Racial Integrity Act, which criminalized marriages
between whites and coloreds. This law stood until 1967 when it was
declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in
Loving v. Virginia.4
Harvey and Lizzie married in 1910; however, to conceal the fact
that she was a Native American,5 Lizzie was listed as a daughter in
the household of Andrew and Polly Smith, Harvey Smith’s parents,
in the 1910 U.S. Census. My grandfather Harvey was listed as their
son-in-law when he was their son and Lizzie was his wife. Harvey
had rescued Lizzie from the tense situation created by the change in
status of Native Americans. Even the extreme poverty of sharecropping
must have seemed an improvement over her status as a Native
American in Virginia. Little is known about Lizzie Smith. Her
death certificate indicates that her father’s name and her mother’s
maiden name was unknown. She was killed by an automobile while
crossing a highway on October 20, 1956.
Harvey and Lizzie had seven children, two boys and five girls.6
3 The Smiths were all born in Virginia or West Virginia.
4 388 U.S. 1; 87 S.Ct. 1817; 18 L.Ed.2d 1010; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 1082
5 It was easier for Native Americans to conceal their color from authorities than
it was for most African Americans.
6 Harvey registered for the military draft in 1917 (and again in 1942). His 1917
draft registration form reveals that he misrepresented his family by claiming that he had
Dr. Robert H. Kimball | 5
My mother, born March 17, 1914, was the oldest of the five girls.
Both sons died tragically. Robert died in 1944 in Nashua, New
Hampshire, the story of which I will relate later, and Henry died in
the great Lexington, Virginia, flood of 1950. All the girls except one
lived into their 80s and 90s.
On September 4, 1908, my father Leslie married Mary
Blanchard. I could find little about her other than basic statistical
information. She was born in approximately 1871 and was from
Stafford, New Hampshire. Leslie was 19 when they married, and
Mary, at 36 years old, was almost twice his age. They were married
for about 15 years and had no children. She died in 1923.
In 1931 at the age of 41, Leslie traveled to Lexington, Virginia,
in a Ford Model T with his brother Henry (“Ollie”) and Ollie’s
wife, Annie, to visit Annie’s family. There he met Annie’s cousin,
Nancy (“Nannie”) May Smith, who was 17, 24 years younger than
Leslie. Leslie offered to take Nannie to live with Annie and Ollie in
New Hampshire.
Nannie’s father, Harvey, objected to her move and refused to
give his permission. Nannie was insistent, and while standing on a
bridge overlooking a deep gorge, they got into a heated argument.
She threatened to jump off the bridge and kill herself if he did not
let her go with Leslie. Her father finally agreed to let her travel to
New Hampshire with Leslie. On July 19, 1931, during the Great
Depression, she and Leslie were married.
Nannie had never attended school and was illiterate, as were her
parents and her paternal grandparents. On the marriage certificate,
Leslie reported his age as 35 when in fact he was 41. He reported
that it was his second marriage, but my mother would insist all her
life that she was his first wife. Nannie could not read the marriage
certificate, and my father took advantage of that to lie to her about
his age and his previous marriage.
In the late 1930s, my mother’s parents walked and hitchhiked
with their children to New Hampshire from Lexington, Virginia, to
nine children when in fact, according to his children’s birth records, he had two at most.
Presumably, he was trying to avoid being drafted.
6 | A Road Less Traveled
visit our family. My older sisters told me that Lizzie was extremely
strict and that they did not like her. She was about 4’6” tall, weighed
about 90 pounds, and had dark hair that was always in a bun.
Author’s parents, Leslie and Nancy Kimball, 1950, Nashua, NH
John Harvey and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Smith, 1950,
maternal grandparents of author, Lexington, VA
CHAPTER TWO
Growing Up Poor
(1944–1959)
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody,
I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty
than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
(1910–1997)
We had few reasons to smile, laugh, or be happy growing up. I
have no memory of any conversation with my father in the almost
ten years that he lived after I was born. While I was a child, the
word “love” was never used in our home by anyone. I never saw my
parents or my brothers and sisters hug or kiss anyone except during
sex. We were all emotionally detached from each other while growing
up and continue to be detached as adults. We each lived in our
private bubble of anger and hopelessness, and no attempt was ever
made to understand or manage it.
Danny, one of my younger brothers cut my arm with a rusted
razor blade when I was seven years old. We could not afford a doctor
to stitch my arm, and consequently I still have a large scar from
that experience.
We had inadequate supervision. My mother allowed her children
to do as they pleased and made no effort to change their behavior.
This laissez-faire attitude toward child-rearing is probably
the source of many of our problems growing up. On August 3,
1950, my sister Nancy tragically fell from a third-floor window because
no one was watching her. Several of my siblings stole, stayed
out all night, drank, did drugs, and probably committed other
crimes because no one tried to instill proper behavior in them. No
