Jonathan Golden Kimball (June 9, 1853 – September 2, 1938) was a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), 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. In the years since his death, "Uncle Golden" has become a near legendary character among church members, possibly comparable to what Will Rogers or Mark Twain are to the general American public. Early life Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, the son of apostle Heber C. Kimball and Christeene Golden Kimball. He was one of sixty-five children fathered by Heber C. Kimball, a practitioner of the early LDS doctrine of plural marriage. Kimball was one of the first generation of Latter-day Saints to be born after the Mormon pioneers' 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 his mother's three children and was fifteen when his father died. To support the family, he left school and became a mule driver. His mother kept boarders as well as sewing for Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution or ZCMI, one of the first department stores in the United States. 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 church's Logan Utah Temple and also worked as superintendent of a lumber mill. After hearing an 1881 speech by educator Karl G. Maeser, the Kimball brothers decided to leave their ranch and return to school. They attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo, receiving certificates in Bookkeeping and Commercial Arithmetic (commercial program diplomas) in June 1881. Service as a missionary After completing his education, Kimball was called as a missionary to the southern United States on April 6, 1883, by LDS Church 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