Mormon Leader. Heber Chase Kimball was First Counselor in the First Presidency in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from December 5, 1847, until his death in 1868. He was born June 14, 1801, near Sheldon, Vermont. In 1811, he and his family moved to western New York, where young Heber became a potter. He grew to be a physically impressive man, six feet tall and weighing more than two hundred pounds, barrel-chested, and dark-eyed. He married Vilate Murray in 1822. He, his friend Brigham Young, and their wives joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1832, and in 1833 they moved to Church headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio. In 1837, Kimball received an assignment from Joseph Smith, the President of the Church, to lead a group of missionaries to England, and became the first Latter-day Saint in Europe. While Smith sat imprisoned in the Liberty, Missouri jail, Kimball and Young organized the removal of approximately 12,000 Latter-day Saint refugees to Illinois. Kimball married a total of forty-three women (in many cases a caretaking rather than an intimate relationship), and by seventeen of them he had sixty-five children. After Smith's assassination in 1844, Church leadership was carried forth by Young, the new President. Kimball stood next in leadership. The pioneer journey of 1847 to the Great Salt Lake Valley occurred under Young's supervision, with Kimball as his assistant. In December 1847, at Kanesville (Council Bluffs), Iowa, the First Presidency of the Church was organized, with Young as president and Kimball and Willard Richards as his counselors. The organization of Utah Territory in 1850 brought hostile federal appointees, but since the population was predominantly Latter-day Saints, Church leaders had de facto control of the legislature. Kimball served as leader of the legislature. Friction between the federally appointed judges and the Latter-day Saints led to U.S. President James Buchanan sending federal troops to suppress a supposed "rebellion" of the Mormons. President Kimball helped direct the resistance. Heber C. Kimball died June 22, 1868, in Provo, Utah from a subdural hematoma occasioned by being thrown from his wagon by a lunging horse. Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985), a grandson of Heber C. Kimball, became the twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1973, and served until his death in 1985.