Historic Homes and Businesses in Carver - Carver County Historical ...

usiness, invested in real estate, and built and owned Worthington‟s Hotel Thompson.
Peter Thompson Jr. was so involved in Worthington‟s founding that he has come to be
called “The Father of Worthington”. In 1884 Peter and Christina Thompson sold their
property and two-story house at 300 Third Street West to George Jacob and Barbara
Magdalena (Lena) Zimbleman, perhaps after having rented it out for some years after
they moved to Worthington.
The Zimblemans were married on March 6, 1879 at the home of John and Barbara
(Bastian) Bloedel in Carver. Mrs. Zimbleman was a daughter of the Bloedels and a
product of their 1857 marriage, the first marriage known in Carver County. The Bloedels
were pioneers in Carver where John set up an early blacksmith and wagon making shop
and apprenticed in the blacksmith trade another Carver pioneer, Charles Dauwalter. In
February 1864 John Bloedel suffered from a destructive fire, and in February 1868 his
large Carver wagon making and blacksmith shop burned down, with a loss of $3500, of
which only $1000 was insured. Already in 1857 the Bloedels owned the Fourth Street
East property, on which the large John Funk Jr. Victorian House was built in 1902, and in
1882 that same property was owned by both the Bloedels and the Zimblemans. It may
well be that this property was the site of the original John Bloedel blacksmith and wagon
making shop.
Fires seem to have run in the family, for between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m. on Sunday night,
January 30, 1887, while the Zimblemans were visiting the Bloedels, their home at 300
Third Street West burned, started, it was believed, from a spark from the wood stove.
The building was a total loss, including $2000 above what they it been insured for. The
Zimblemans built a small new house on the site, probably later that year, and yet
sometime later an ell was added, forming the present house into a “T” plan. Bricks
continue to be found on the property today, probably remnants of the earlier burned
house.
George Jacob Zimbleman was a Carver businessman in the insurance business. In local
newspapers in 1887 he advertised that the Zimbleman Insurance Agency offered
insurance for fire, tornado, life, accident, and livestock, as well as money to loan. The
disastrous fire of 1887 and the building of a new house seem to have stretched
Zimbleman to the limit. In 1888 local newspapers noted that Zimbleman owed money to
several insurance companies for which he acted as agent, as well as to parties inside and
outside of Carver. The Carver Free Press newspaper of February 1888 noted that
Zimbleman of Carver had “jumped the country”, leaving “a wife and child behind and
they are to be pitied”. One account noted that Zimbleman was seen catching a train out
of Waconia. In 1895 Zimbleman was known to be working at a San Francisco,
California brewery, then calling himself Jacob Zimbleman.
Later in 1887 Albert and Mary Kacher purchased the home for $1100, owning it until
1892 when they sold it to Solomon and Emma Johnson, who owned it until 1913.
Solomon Johnson came to Carver County in 1856 and had owned a farmstead in
Dahlgren Township, just outside of Carver, retiring to the Zimbleman house. Solomon‟s
wife Emma was the organist at Salem Lutheran church, diagonally across the street from