Appendix B: Andrew’s Children

Maude Woolley

Maude Woolley Kimball, born on December 9, 1882, was Andrew and Ollie’s first child. She died of pneumonia on October 24, 1883, shortly before her first birthday. They buried her in the Salt Lake City Cemetery and Andrew built a little, decorative fence around her grave. In September 1909, while in Salt Lake City for general conference, Andrew arranged for a “little box” to be made for Maude’s remains and he moved them from where they were buried in a full lot to a half lot, so the full lot could be sold.⁸²⁷ Maude’s name appears on the Kimball monument in Thatcher cemetery even though her body lies in Utah.

Olive Clare

Olive Clare, named Olive after her mother but called Clare to distinguish them, was born in Salt Lake City on October 11, 1884. She was thirteen when her family moved to Arizona. There in 1903, at age eighteen, she married Hyrum James Brinkerhoff. He had returned from the Southern States Mission early because of illness. For the first years they homesteaded in Artesia (near Thatcher), Arizona, in an area notable for its artesian wells. Hy ran a herd of Angora goats in Arizona and later in California.⁸²⁸ Graham County Angora goats produced world-class mohair,⁸²⁹ but Hy struggled financially.⁸³⁰ He moved the family to Los Angeles in July 1913, briefly to Thatcher, Arizona, in 1915, then back to Los Angeles. Because Hy was not providing much in the way of support, Clare went to work in 1918 in a series of hard, physical jobs (taking in laundry, fruit packing, meat packing, glass manufacturing, waitressing). Hy asked for a divorce in 1919, so he could marry a woman he had been going with secretly for three years. Hy moved the family to Tucson, thinking this would speed the divorce. Because he provided little means, Clare continued working as a waitress. Even though the divorce was not finalized until 1922, Hy had already married the woman in 1921 in Mexico. Hy lived largely on her money and took up smoking and drinking. Clare supported their four children alone. She returned to Huntington Park, California, from 1922 to 1928. She moved to Safford in 1928 and married Hyrum Claridge, an older widower with a large, grown family. Clare obtained a temple divorce from Brinkerhoff in 1929, so that she could be sealed to Hy Claridge.⁸³¹ They worked for a time at Ft. Grant, an institution for delinquent boys, he as guard, and she as bookkeeper. They then moved to Safford and kept a poultry farm.

Clare died on November 24, 1967. She had four children—Harold Kimball Brinkerhoff, Leona Brinkerhoff (Andrews), Velva Ruth Brinkerhoff (Farr), Spencer LeRoi Brinkerhoff. Harold was a civilian prisoner of war in Japan (1941–45).⁸³²

Andrew Gordon

The eldest son, called Gordon,⁸³³ was born on April 6, 1888, in Salt Lake City. Gordon was nine when the family moved to Arizona. Through his teenage years in Thatcher he had much responsibility for work on the family farm because he was the oldest son. In September 1907 he left for a mission in California. After some months Gordon was transferred to the Central States Mission, an area that had been included in the Indian Territory Mission when Andrew presided over it years earlier. Gordon proselytized without purse or scrip through villages and farms in Missouri. When he returned from his mission he married Clara Curtis, who had waited for him. In 1912 he obtained work as a janitor and messenger in a bank in Tucson. In 1914 he became a bookkeeper and eventually assistant cashier. He worked for the bank continuously for forty years, until his retirement in 1952, at which time he was appointed Tucson city treasurer.⁸³⁴

When Gordon and Clara first moved to Tucson in 1912, they were the only Mormons living there. In 1914 they built a house in Binghampton, six miles away, because it had a Church branch. They moved back to Tucson in 1919 when a few other Mormons had settled there, and a Sunday School was organized that met in their home. Over the years, as the Church grew from just a Sunday School to a branch (1921) and then into a ward (1941), Gordon and Clara proved to be stalwarts, spending enormous effort at whatever tasks needed to be done. Gordon was the man-of-all-work, from clerk to builder to janitor to repairman to teacher. Among his talents was a lovely tenor voice. He sang often at weddings, funerals, and in the annual Tucson performance of “The Messiah.” From 1942 to 1950 Gordon served as a bishop and from 1952 as a patriarch. In 1956 he and Clara moved to Mesa to work in the temple there.

In 1959 they accepted a two-year mission to direct the Hill Cumorah Bureau of Information. Ill health, which had dogged him his entire life in various forms, made his last years difficult, until he died on his birthday, at age eighty-seven, in 1975. His death certificate gives as final cause arteriosclerosis, the same diagnosis given his father. Gordon’s children are Olive Kimball (Mitchell), Sarah Fern Kimball (Brown), Gordon Curtis Kimball, and June Kimball (Alldredge).

Delbert Gheen

Delbert Gheen Kimball was born in Brigham City, Utah, on September 16, 1890. At age seven he moved with his family to Arizona. Dell (also spelled Del) was sixteen in 1906 when his mother died, and he seems to have been deeply affected. Rather than stay at home under the eye of his stepmother, Dell went to live and work with Hy Brinkerhoff and Clare, although Hy was probably not a good influence.

Dell did not get along well with his stepmother, but after two years away he asked to come home again and returned to high school.

Dell called himself a prodigal and avoided much involvement with the Church until the last few years of his life. Andrew felt disappointment in Dell’s choices, yet he never made Dell feel rejected. Indeed, Dell saw his father as indulgent.

Father liked me. I was the wayward one, so he liked me. . . . In about 1922 when Josie died, I was smoking then and never once did he say I think if I were you I’d stop smoking. He was not one to criticize. I don’t understand it. I needed it, but I was wilful. . . . I was a nice boy but didn’t want anybody to tell me how to live my life. . . . I and my friends would go to Safford, smoking and taking a glass of beer. . . . He loved me very much but he didn’t curb me. . . . I’ll try to be better in the hereafter. If I get too deep in trouble I can call on Heber C. or my Dad or Spencer, maybe. That’s what I’m relying on.⁸³⁵

In contrast to Dell’s version of Andrew’s permissiveness, Andrew repeatedly called on Dell to change his behavior. For example, he wrote to Dell at age eighteen: “Schooling and a [good] time don’t go hand in hand, you will have to cut out dancing to excess, leave girls out of the question. . . . get to work and do something for yourself. . . . Del, my boy, you are not to decide whether or not you are going to school. I have settled that matter.”⁸³⁶

Another time Andrew wrote Dell, then age nineteen: “All I ask of my boys is that they will do right by me and honor the name I have worked so hard to establish.”⁸³⁷ And “I want you to go to St. David to Sunday school and try and redeem yourself in the eyes of the Lord and your Father, no more foolishness, if you make any more breaks you go it alone.”⁸³⁸

Andrew’s concern was not only general, but also specific. While they were nineteen-year-old students at the academy, Dell fathered a child with Genevieve (Jennie) Middleton. On February 8, 1910, she delivered Dell’s son, ultimately named Theo Curtis Kimball LeBaron. Jennie died from complications associated with childbirth, and Andrew helped arrange adoption of the baby by the LeBaron family.⁸³⁹ Dell believed she died because the birth took place without a doctor.⁸⁴⁰

A poignant letter from Genevieve to Dell from Globe came when she was four months pregnant. It reveals her fears:

yes, dell, I can forgive you for what has past, as I consider myself to blame. I was a darn fool and I realized it all too late. You know, of course, I thought something of you, or I would have done differently. You can never realize, dell, what misery I have gone through, not altogether physically, but mentally. I don’t know what to do some times. I have got to decide before much longer tho’. I am not going to stay here. I would kill myself before I would let sister, or any of the rest of the family know anything. . . . Will you please burn this as soon as you read it. For god sake, and for my sake, dell, don’t put it where anyone can get it. . . . i am as ever, Genevieve⁸⁴¹

David O. LeBaron and Amy Richins LeBaron of Mesa adopted Theo. Andrew maintained contact with Theo, visiting him from time to time when he was in the Mesa area.⁸⁴²

Dell also took some responsibility:

Father, I indeed appreciate the interest you take in, and the kindness you feel toward the little boy “Theo.” I regret I haven’t a picture of his mother to send you. I never had one of her. Neither have I any pictures of myself. I intend to do what is right toward the little fellow. So taking all into consideration I feel as you do, that the best has been done for his welfare.⁸⁴³

In 1931, Dell offered to have Theo come live with him while he went to college, to save Theo expenses.⁸⁴⁴

In 1911, Dell went to Utah State Agricultural College. He was a serious student but when money he was owed did not come, he had to drop out to work.⁸⁴⁵ He got into some unspecified trouble with the law, and his father bailed him out.⁸⁴⁶ Dell later completed a correspondence course in accounting.⁸⁴⁷

In World War I, he joined the army and excelled as a drill sergeant. Afterward he returned to homesteading and working at whatever jobs he could find. By 1929 he was working as a clerk in the Los Angeles city treasurer’s office, where he stayed until retirement.⁸⁴⁸

In 1933 he married Madonna (“Don”) Craft of New York. After he retired they moved between locations in California and Arizona. Don died in 1973 and as an elderly widower, thereafter, Dell returned to some involvement in the Church and was ordained an elder in 1976. He died in Arizona on December 15, 1977, and is buried beside “Genevieve Kimball” and Theo’s adopted mother, Amy LeBaron.⁸⁴⁹ Theo was Dell’s only child.

Ruth Woolley

Ruth Woolley Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, on November 8, 1892. She was five years old when the family moved to Gila Valley. When her mother died, she played the mother role for some months until her father remarried. She married John Hunt Udall (called “H”) and moved to St. Johns, Arizona. They had one child, John Nicholas, who went by Nick.

Ruth died on May 27, 1915, when Nick was just an infant. H felt devastated at the loss of his young wife. After suffering a miscarriage she had gone to California for a D&C. The surgeon went ahead with the operation even though she had not recovered from a cold. She died of pneumonia.⁸⁵⁰ In his remarks at Ruth’s funeral, Andrew described a dream he had about his wife, Ollie. “She was nursing a baby and she said, ‘I am going to heaven. That is my home and you will have to remain.’ . . . I was so happy and thought all my troubles were a dream. I hastened to her and was about to embrace her when she was gone.”

Years later, H told Nick when he was about twelve years old that one night after Ruth’s death, as H was sitting by a campfire, Ruth appeared to him and said she was happy in her calling, but that the Lord was not happy with his continued mourning. It was not fair to Nick to leave him without a mother, she said, and H should marry again and have a family. He did remarry about a year and a half after Ruth died.⁸⁵¹

Andrew came to St. Johns about twice a year particularly to see his grandson Nick, even though Nick was just a little boy.⁸⁵² Nick later became the mayor of Phoenix, was appointed as a federal judge, and served as an LDS patriarch.

Spencer Woolley

Spencer Woolley Kimball was born on March 28, 1895, in Salt Lake City. He was three years old when his family moved to Arizona. At age nineteen he served in the Central States Mission. A call to serve in the military in World War I ended his college education. When his mobilization was deferred he married Camilla Eyring, whose family had come to the Gila Valley as refugees in the 1912 exodus of Mormon colonists from Mexico. He worked in a bank until he and a partner established an insurance and real estate agency in Safford. After serving his father, Andrew, as stake clerk from 1919 to 1924, Spencer became a counselor in the St. Joseph Stake presidency (1924) and then president of the new Mt. Graham Stake (1936) until he was called to serve as an apostle (1943). In 1973 he became president of the LDS Church. His twelve years as president are noteworthy for an increased missionary corps, construction of many new temples, calling the First Quorum of the Seventy, and receipt of a revelation allowing worthy men of all races to be ordained to the priesthood and worthy men and women to be admitted to the temples. He died on November 5, 1985. His children are Spencer LeVan Kimball, Olive Beth Kimball (Mack), Andrew Eyring Kimball, and Edward Lawrence Kimball.

Alice Ann

Alice Ann was born on March 26, 1897, in Salt Lake City. At the academy in Thatcher she met Thomas George Nelson, whose family had come from Mexico. They were married in 1916 upon graduating from high school. Alice had eleven children, like her mother. For a while the Nelsons engaged some in small-scale dairying, but mostly over many years they earned a hard living truck farming on 120 acres near Tucson. They raised a wide range of crops, including sweet corn, onions, cabbage, spinach, string beans, watermelons, cantaloupes, and even watercress grown in their pond. Alice and her daughters bottled as many as thirteen hundred jars of fruits and vegetables. The family also owned a sandpit and sold sand. The Nelsons moved to Thatcher in 1956.

Alice died on March 5, 1981. Her children are George Kimball Nelson, Andrew Hyrum Nelson, Olive Nelson (Brown), Martha Grace Nelson (Howells), David Eugene Nelson, Mary Nelson, Omer Dean Nelson, Alice Ann Nelson (Taylor), Ruth Nelson, Elaine Nelson (Tolman), and Thomas Delbert Nelson.

Fannie Woolley

Ollie named her eighth child after her sister Fannie. The baby came on March 18, 1899, less than a year after the move to Arizona. Ollie developed a fierce loyalty to the Gila Valley, but it took time. In some ways she still experienced this as a time of exile. Especially during this time she missed the comforting presence of her mother and sisters.

Fannie flourished under the care and affection of six siblings and two parents, but at nearly five years of age Fannie died. Her personality had developed beyond infancy, so her loss stung even more than the deaths of two infants who had passed away previously. Fannie lingered agonizingly for weeks before her heart finally gave out on March 24, 1904. Ollie took the disappointment so hard that Andrew worried deeply for her own health; consolation came only slowly.

Helen Mar

Helen Mar, born on September 4, 1901, died on December 18, 1948. Helen was the first of the children to be born in Arizona, and because of the early deaths of her two younger sisters she was for most of her life the “little sister.” She met Erron Williams Farr in school at Thatcher. He lived in Binghampton, having come from the LDS colonies in Mexico. The couple married in 1918 when she was seventeen. They lived in Utah and Arizona working at various jobs, including head of the dairy at the Utah State Mental Hospital. Helen showed great skill in managing a large household on little income. They bought a dairy farm in Arizona, but in 1947 Helen was diagnosed with cancer and returned to Utah for treatment. She suffered greatly until she died nearly a year later. Helen’s children are Erron Laretus Farr, Margaret Farr (Allen), Genevieve Farr (Lee), Melvin Kimball Farr, Barbara Farr (Romney), Andrew Eugene Farr, and Lloyd Heber Farr.

Mary Woolley

Mary Woolley was born and died the same day, October 18, 1903, in Thatcher, Arizona. Hers was a difficult birth. Andrew, in San Francisco on his way home from October conference in 1903, received a wire from Ollie to hurry home. When he arrived two days later he found that “Ollie was somewhat disfigured in her face and limbs swollen up.”⁸⁵³ On the 18th, “At 1 a.m. Ollie called me up. the water broke and she gave evidence of near confinement. Was soon in labor pains. I got Bro. Nash to go for Dr. Wish. . . . Dr. came at about 3:30 a.m., nurse about 6 a.m. Baby was born at 5 a.m. Baby was a beautiful and perfect child, daughter, except through some accident its upper jaw from nostril on left side was crushed in. it died soon after. I made arrangements for burial.”

“Oct. 19, 1903. Ollie passed a very trying night. Her system was so thoroughly filled with water that it was unpleasant for her. Arangements were made for funeral at 4 p.m. . . . Our parlor and sitting room were filled with friends. . . . Ollie . . . felt very bad about it. hard to keep her courage up.”

Rachel Woolley

Rachel Woolley, born on January 26, 1905, died on June 8, 1907, of diphtheria. Her death came tragically while Andrew and Josie were in Salt Lake City to be married.

Andrew and Ollie had thirty grandchildren, and there were seven step-grandchildren through Josie’s daughter, Nettie, and son-in-law, David Phillips.