J. Golden Kimball - Early Life

Early Life

Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, the son of Apostle Heber C. Kimball and Christeene Golden Kimball. He was one of sixty-five children fathered by Heber C. Kimball, a practitioner of the early LDS doctrine of plural marriage. Kimball was one of the first generation of Latter-day Saints to be born after the Mormon pioneers' exodus to Utah in 1847, and was familiar with the pioneer experience and the expansion of Latter-day Saint settlements in the Intermountain Region.

Kimball was the oldest of three children of his mother and was only fifteen when his father died. To support the family, he left school and became a mule driver. His mother kept boarders as well as sewing for Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution or ZCMI, one of the first department stores in the United States. In 1876, he and his brother Elias established a horse and cattle ranch in Meadowville, Rich County, and moved there with their immediate family. He cut timber during the winter for use in the construction of the Church's Logan Utah Temple and also worked as superintendent of a lumber mill. After hearing an 1881 speech by the German-born educator Karl G. Maeser, the Kimball brothers decided to leave their ranch and return to school. They attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo, receiving Certificates in Bookkeeping and Commercial Arithmetic (commercial program diplomas) in June 1881.