Jonathan Golden Kimball (June 9, 1853 - September 2, 1938) was a prominent and well known leader of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as a member of the First Council of the Seventy from 1892 until his death in 1938. He is considered one of the most colorful and beloved of the Church's General Authorities during this period.
Kimball 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 Mormons to be born after the exodus to Utah in 1847, and was familiar with the pioneer experience and the expansion of Mormon 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
Logan Temple and also worked as superintendent of a lumber mill. After hearing a 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 April 6, 1883 by LDS President
John Taylor. Kimball remembered that he:
left Chattanooga, Tennessee, with twenty-seven elders assigned to the Southern States. There were all kinds of elders in the company--farmers, cowboys, few educated--a pretty hard-looking crowd, and I was one of that kind. The elders preached, and talked, and sang, and advertised loudly their calling as preachers. I kept still for once in my life; I hardly opened my mouth. I saw a gentleman on the train. I can visualize that man now. I didn't know who he was. He knew we were a band of Mormon elders. The elders soon commenced a discussion and argument with the stranger, and before he got through they were in grave doubt about their message of salvation. He gave them a training that they never forgot. That man proved to be (LDS Mission) President B. H. Roberts. (Conference Report, October 1933, page 42)
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, August 10, 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 a conference address in 1927, he summarized his experiences in the southern states:
I was in the South three years, presiding over the mission, under the greatest hardships and the greatest difficulties I have ever endured in all my life...yet I have had the greatest joy and the greatest peace and happiness.
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:
Some people say a person receives a position in this church through revelation, and others say they get it through inspiration, but I say they get it through relation. If I hadn't been related to Heber C. Kimball I wouldn't have been a damn thing in this church."
Kimball served as an LDS general authority for forty-six years. During the time, it was customary for church leaders to frequently travel to Mormon 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 Mormon Church. Asked how he could get away with the way he spoke, Elder Kimball is said to have replied:
Hell, they can't excommunicate me. I repent too damned fast.
"J. Golden" stories have become a type of folklore for members of the LDS Church. One of the best known has Church President Grant writing a "clean" radio speech for Kimball and ordering him to read it. However, once on the air, Kimball struggled with Grant's handwriting and finally exclaimed,
Hell, Heber, I can't read this damn thing.
Western author
Wallace Stegner recorded in "Mormon Country":
J. Golden was the one high dignitary who could keep any audience from sleep. They called him the Will Rogers of the Church. That was a mistake. He should never have been compared with anyone, because J. Golden was an original. Throughout the Mormon Country he is already a legend. Anecdotes and stories float through every Mormon hamlet, and there is even a kind of fraternity of storytellers specializing in J. Golden stories. But like all originals, he defies transcription. He was himself, no less, no more, and nobody knew it better than he.
Kimball was acting as the senior President of the Seventy when he was killed in 1938, at the age of seventy-five, in an automobile accident in the
Nevada desert fifty miles east of
Reno.
