Brenham Meteorite

The Brenham Meteorite was discovered in 1882 on the Kimberly farm in Kiowa County, Kanss. Over 1400 kg has been recovered to date making it one of the most plentiful of the pallasite/siderite meteorites. Eliza first found the meteorites in the fields being plowed by her husband and began stockpiling them much to Franks dislike, as he was trying to farm the land. Eliza kept writing for someone to look at her meteorites, eventually Dr. F.W. Cragen at Washburn College in Kansas agreed to look at the collection. When he arrived he was happily surprised looking at the pile of specimens and paid her several hundred dollars for about half of the specimens. This income from Eliza’s first sale was enough to allow Frank and Eliza to buy a neighboring property where more of the specimens were found. As word got out, many came to buy specimens and brisk sales were generated for a number of years. Frank quickly changed his tune after the first sale his wife had made, and began looking for meteorites himself. Over a ton and a half had been sold just past the turn of the century by the Kimberly’s. Their place was known as the Kansas Meteorite Farm. In 1929 while visiting Eliza and Frank Kimberly on their farm Harvey H. Nininger was shown a shallow depression that was forty feet wide. The rim around the edge peaked his interest and he began excavation the crater called Haviland using teams of horses and road scrapers