In his teen years Andrew, then fatherless, may have been somewhat careless in his conduct, experimenting with smoking and drinking and avoiding Church duties. At least in one of his first meetings as a twenty-year-old deacon he is quoted as saying “that he was glad to meet with us . . . much better than when he was out and about the streets learning to smoke and swear.”26 His twin, Alice, accused him of being sometimes irritable and cross with his mother.27
In 1898, Alice, asking Andrew to be more patient with her sixteen-year-old-son, Coulsen, who had given Andrew some difficulty, wrote, “You will remember when you was just his age you went out to the Half Way House. You wanted to start out for your self. If you had had someone then to take you kindly by the hand and shew you a few things you would have missed many hardships.”28 And she wrote several months later,
He is more like you when that age than any one I know of. He had the same spirit as you had at his age. Nothing would do you must go away from home, you must have a change, a new experience. . . . —Since writing the above I received a letter from Coulsen telling of his careless accident and how bad he feels. Let him come home with good feelings about being with you.29
To Alice’s comment about his youthful behavior, Andrew responded,
I have always been a clean boy, [but] there has been times when I was a little uncertain about sacred things. You, my sisters and my sainted mother, tried to get me to have my endowments just before they closed the old [Endowment] house [in 1889], when the Temple in St. George was completed [in 1877]. I told you I was unworthy. I did not mean that I had done anything wrong, but I had not been under an environment that would prepare me for such a sacred ordinance; because I refused, Mother thot I had done something wrong, and until I told her I would take the right course in life she could not die in peace. I have kept my word and my angel mother is honored today. That’s all, Alice.
After he promised his mother he “would take the right course in life” he was rebaptized as a symbol of recommitment and ordained a deacon (in 1878). She died in 1879.
Andrew at about eighteen years old and Olive at about seventeen.
Whatever his teenage delinquencies, Andrew proved himself from age twenty-one to be an exemplary person, actively serving as a missionary or in a leadership calling until the end of his life.30
In June 1884 Andrew was one of several elders interviewed to become seventies. “There were three not permitted on account of not keeping the Word of wisdom,”31 but Andrew was not only ordained a seventy but also set apart as one of the presidents of the 30th Quorum of Seventies.32
The 1880 census, taken a year after their mother died, shows Andrew (then twenty-one and still single), his brother Daniel, Daniel’s wife, Johanna, and their two children living in Alice Ann’s house. Andrew’s married twin sister, Alice Kimball Rich, lived next door at 376 West 400 North, where she could look after their mother.33 Sarah had recently married and moved out. Andrew still lived in the family home after he married Olive (Ollie) Woolley in 1882; they lived in that house until they built their own in 1888.
Family of Edwin D. Woolley and Mary Ann Olpin about 1880. Residence 216 South 200 East, Salt Lake City. Ollie is standing on the left.
During Andrew’s growing-up years the city developed apace, particularly after 1869 when the finished transcontinental railroad brought people and goods more easily to Utah. By the time Andrew was a young adult, miles of water mains reduced the necessity of obtaining culinary water from wells or ditches. Electricity became available for street lighting. Electric streetcars replaced mule-drawn streetcars. Coal-manufactured gas provided illumination. But in spite of the fact that when Andrew and Ollie married in 1882 the population of Salt Lake City was about twenty-five thousand, the city still lacked an extensive water or sewage system, paved streets, and adequate health services.34
Notes
26. Salt Lake City Nineteenth Ward, Deacons Minutes, October 25, 1878.
27. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, January 6 or 7, 1878, Church History Library.
28. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, May 15, 1898, Church History Library.
29. Alice K. Smith to Andrew Kimball, November 22, 1898, Church History Library.
30. Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, 1:364. In the introductory pages of Andrew’s Journals, before the January 1, 1884, entry, Andrew wrote that he was ordained a deacon in September 1878. This date is overwritten with “October or November 1879.” The earlier date seems likely, since Andrew is mentioned in “19th Ward Deacons Minutes” beginning on September 13, 1878. He said on one occasion, “I spoke of my mother dying for my sake since which time and not before I was converted.” Andrew Kimball, Journal, January 3, 1898. It seems likely he meant that the prospect of her death had been the occasion of his becoming converted.
31. Notation on first page of Andrew Kimball, Journal, 1888.
32. Andrew Kimball, Journal, June 9, 1884; first page of Andrew Kimball, Journals, 1884. For more information on the seventies at this time, see Hartley, “The Seventies in the 1880s: Revelations and Reorganizing,” in My Fellow Servants, 265–300.
33. Kyle and Company’s First Annual Directory of Salt Lake City (Kelly and Company). She was then married to David Patten Rich, whom she later divorced. See Alice’s entry in appendix A.
34. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 107–10, 123. Andrew wrote to the newspaper on February 10, 1890, deploring the need still to draw culinary water from ditches. Andrew Kimball, “On Water Works, Filthy Condition of our Ditch Water,” clipping in Andrew Kimball, Papers.
