Eliza Kimberly
The Kansas farmer's wife who gathered heavy black stones from her family's fields and proved that they were pallasite meteorites.
Key facts
- Born
- c. 1849
- Died
- 1933
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Farmer and collector
Eliza Kimberly moved with her husband Frank to a homestead in Kiowa County, Kansas, in 1885. Their land was scattered with heavy, dark, rusty stones that farmers in the area found annoying, because they broke ploughs and had to be carted off the fields.
Eliza had read about meteorites and became convinced the stones had fallen from the sky. Despite the doubts of her husband and neighbours, she collected them and kept them in a pile beside the house. She wrote to scientists asking someone to examine them.
In 1890 the geologist Francis Cragin of Washburn College in Topeka visited the farm. He confirmed that the stones were meteorites and bought several of them, and Francis Snow of the University of Kansas also acquired pieces. They were pallasites, a rare kind of stony-iron meteorite with yellow-green olivine crystals set in nickel-iron metal. The fall became known as Brenham, after a nearby township.
The sales gave the family money at a hard time. Later, Harvey Nininger dug on the land and found a small crater with more meteorites. Eliza Kimberly's persistence turned a nuisance into one of the most famous meteorite finds in America, and pieces of Brenham are now in museums around the world.