Archives West Finding Aid

J. Golden Kimball (1853-1938) was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of Apostle Heber C. Kimball and Christeen Golden Kimball. He was one of sixty-five children fathered by Heber C. Kimball. Kimball was one of the first generation of Latter-day Saints to be born after the pioneer 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 and was only fifteen when his father died. To support the family, he left school and became a mule driver. His mother sewed for Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution or ZCMI, one of the first department stores in the United States, and kept boarders. 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 LDS 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, Kimball and Elias decided to leave their ranch and return to school. They attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo.

After two profitable years of education, he was called as a missionary to the southern United States on 6 April 1883 by LDS President John Taylor. Kimball served in a time of great persecution and some violence in the South. He was serving in the mission office in Chattanooga, as mission secretary, when three LDS elders were killed by a mob as they held services on Sunday,10 August 1884. Although he developed a case of malaria, which troubled him for many years, Kimball remained active in the mission until his release in the spring of 1885.

Kimball returned to ranching in the Bear Lake Valley and married Jennie Knowlton, a daughter of John Q. and Ellen Smith Knowlton. The couple had six children, three boys and three girls. Due to his distinguished record as a missionary, he was called to return as president of the Southern States mission in 1892.

In 1892, while still serving as mission president, Kimball was called to be an LDS General Authority as a member of the First Council of Seventy. He modestly and humorously attributed his new position to his father's influence Kimball served as an LDS general authority for forty-six years. During the time, it was customary for church leaders to frequently travel to LDS communities in the western territories and states. Kimball gave hundreds of sermons, sparkling with humor and wit. He was well known for swearing good naturedly from the pulpit, sprinkling "damns" and "hells" into his speeches. Although the habit was of concern to other church leaders, and subjected him to counsel from his close friend LDS President Heber J. Grant on many occasions, this common touch made Kimball one of the most beloved leaders in the history of the LDS Church.

Kimball was acting as the senior President of the Seventy when he was killed in 1938, at the age of eighty-five, in a single-vehicle automobile accident in the Nevada desert fifty miles east of Reno.