Born in the coal town of Beaver Meadows, near Hazelton, Pennsylvania, Kimmel worked in the coal mines starting at age 13. Still in his teens, he moved to the Philadelphia area and worked at various jobs for the next 50 years. With his health deteriorating in 1962, he went to live with his son who ran an antiques shop. He took up watercolor painting, taking the Pennsylvania Amish farms remembered from his youth as his primary subject. At a time when the work of Grandma Moses was widely celebrated, Kimmel's paintings found a ready market in his son's shop and other local venues. "Pa" Kimmel, as he was known, painted hundreds of pictures, many ending up in regional collections. In 1974 his work was featured in Four Delaware Valley Primitives: Henry Braunstein, Ida E. Jones, Edward Charles Kimmel, Horace Pippin at the Delaware Art Museum.
