Ann Alice Gheen, born on December 20, 1827, married Heber C. Kimball as a plural wife in Nauvoo on September 10, 1844, when she was just sixteen, but she had her first child, Samuel, in Utah on December 9, 1851, at age twenty-three. She lived her later years in poor health, suffering from chronic bronchitis. She died on October 12, 1879, leaving behind five children.
Ann Alice Gheen Kimball’s family: standing Andrew, Daniel Heber, seated Alice Ann, Samuel Heber, Sarah Gheen.
Her first child was Samuel Heber Kimball, born on December 9, 1851. Sam, seven years older than Andrew, ended schooling at age fourteen and became a muleskinner, freighting in mining camps. The 1870 census lists him as a farmhand living with his mother. In 1870, at age eighteen, he married Oradine Pratt. Their baby, Elmo, died in 1872, as did Oradine herself. The next year Sam married Marta (or Martha) Isadora Schofield and they had five children together.809 In 1877 he homesteaded in newly settled Grouse Creek, in the very northwest corner of Utah Territory. There he served as the first bishop of Grouse Creek Ward, but after three years he asked to be released.810 He continued to live there until at least 1900 when a friend reported to Andrew, “Sam is taking another tug up stream. He has quit drinking and swearing and last meeting there he handed out his plug of tobacco and promised to use it no more. I had a long talk with him.”811
After Marta’s death, Sam married Rosabel Thomas in 1902. They moved frequently. In 1907, Sam lost livestock to the weather and had three frozen fingers amputated.812 In 1908 he was in Canada. In 1915, in Portland, Oregon, he was “fleeced” of all his property. That year he worked in an Oregon cement plant, the next year as a watchman at a sugar factory. Then in 1920, at age sixty-nine, he was farming in Idaho, where his crops burned up for lack of water.813 Sam died on April 18, 1943, at age ninety-one.
Ann’s second son was Daniel Heber Kimball, born on February 8, 1856. He was eleven when his father died and nineteen in 1875, when he married Johanna Okelberry. They had seven children together.814 They lived in the Mill Creek area of the Salt Lake Valley. In 1898, Daniel served a mission in the Southern States but returned early on account of his wife’s illness.815 After his wife died the next year, Daniel married Mary Alice Britt, a divorced woman he had known in Alabama. She brought two children to the marriage and they had four more children together.816 Daniel lived for a time in California; Rexburg, Idaho; and back in Salt Lake City. At various times he farmed, handled groceries wholesale, and worked in a nursery. In 1905 he was a timekeeper for the Idaho Sugar Company, but when it closed down he lost his job.817 Dan ultimately became a clerk at Z.C.M.I. and an armed, night watchman at Temple Square. He died on April 26, 1936, at age eighty.
Andrew Kimball was the third child. He and his twin sister, Alice, were born on September 6, 1858. He started to work at age fifteen on railroad construction, then ranching and leather tanning. At the time he married Ollie Woolley, on February 2, 1882, he worked for the railway as a fireman and machinist. After serving a mission to Indian Territory, from 1885 to 1887, he worked as a traveling salesman out of Salt Lake City and Brigham City, from 1887 to 1897, during which time he also supervised missionary work in the Indian Territory Mission. In late 1897 he received a call to preside over the St. Joseph Stake in southeast Arizona. His wife, Ollie, had eleven children, including Spencer W.818 She died in 1906. He then married Josephine Cluff, and after she died in 1922, he married Mary Connelly. He served as stake president until his death on August 31, 1924, at age sixty-five.
Alice Ann Kimball, Andrew’s twin, married David Patten Rich (five years older than she) on December 5, 1875, when she was just seventeen. Six weeks after their marriage David came home drunk and proved himself a binge drinker who might express his regret, be sober for months, then get drunk again. After a while he began staying away nights. David’s own father advised Alice that if David continued to drink she should divorce him.
Her first child was Alice May, born on October 10, 1877. Alice Ann filed for divorce in 1880, but withdrew the suit on David’s protest of change. Twins Heber Chase and Charles Coulsen were born on November 19, 1881. A year later David relapsed. He never struck Alice, but he threatened her and made her life miserable. In the spring of 1882 he left one morning and never returned. She finally divorced him.819 While married to David, Alice lived next door to her invalid mother and looked after her.820
President John Taylor cancelled her temple sealing and on December 6, 1883, Alice, then age twenty-five, married Elder Joseph F. Smith as his sixth wife. He adopted her three children and they had four more children together.821
Alice died at age eighty-eight on December 19, 1946, among the last surviving of Heber’s children.
Sarah Gheen Kimball was born on May 11, 1861. She married Louis Seckels on December 18, 1879, when she was eighteen. This was just two months after her mother had died. She and Louis had a son and a daughter. Louis had mining interests and was not a Mormon. Sarah became a Christian Scientist in 1893, and that created some distance between her and her siblings.822 Much of her married life she lived in Salt Lake City, but she also moved around with her husband’s employment (including Butte, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Peru).823 Sarah became a grandmother when her son, Louis Jr., had a daughter on July 7, 1910.824 Sarah died at age fifty-one in Los Angeles on February 8, 1913, two or three days after an operation for gallstones. She was buried in Salt Lake City after a Christian Science funeral service. Her son, Louis, was an inspector for the Oregon Shortline Railroad Company and her daughter, Alice K., was at that time unmarried, a well-known musician, and “a Scientist through and through.”825 When Sarah died, her husband was away in Peru working with Alfred W. McCune, the Utah mining and railroad magnate.826
Notes
809. Their children were Clare, Leo, Samuel Heber Jr., George, and Preston.
810. Paskett, “Early History of Grouse Creek, Utah.”
811. William T. Jack to Andrew Kimball, November 29, 1900, Church History Library. The 1900 census shows him there with wife Marta (or Martha) and one child.
812. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, March 12, 1907, Church History Library.
813. Samuel Kimball to Alice K. Smith, December 20, 1920, Church History Library.
814. Carter, Heber C. Kimball His Wives and Family, 27. Johanna’s children were Dan Carlos, Ernest Rollo, Joan Pearl, Louis Chase, Lester Earl, Charles Vivian, and Sarah Katherine.
815. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, November 22, 1898, Church History Library.
816. Daniel’s two stepchildren were Daisy Eloise Simmons and Annabelle Simmons; his own four were Daniel Heber Jr., Alice June, George Douglas, and Frank Colette.
817. Andrew Kimball to Alice K. Smith, February 25, 1905, Church History Library.
818. They were: Maude Woolley, Olive Clare, Andrew Gordon, Delbert Gheen, Ruth Woolley, Spencer Woolley, Alice Ann, Helen Mar, Fannie Woolley, Mary Woolley, and Rachel Woolley.
819. Alice Ann Kimball, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 4.
820. In the 1879 city directory both have the same address: “ns 5 N bet 2 and 3 W.”
821. Alice Ann Kimball, “Autobiographical Sketch.”
822. Andrew Kimball to Alice K. Smith, February 25, 1905, Church History Library. Andrew and Sarah corresponded and visited, but only occasionally. She contributed regularly to support of the family cemetery. She, Louis, and their two children came to visit. Andrew Kimball, Journal, October 11, 1894. Louis also gave Andrew $50 for negotiating the purchase of a piece of land.
823. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, September 6, 1906, Church History Library.
824. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, July 15, 1910, Church History Library.
825. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, February 15, 1913, Church History Library.
826. Newspaper clipping, “Sudden Death Claims Mrs. Sarah K. Seckels,” in Andrew Kimball, Journal, February 1913.
