Heber J. Grant

Family Background

1856. March 22: Born Heber Jeddy Grant to Apostle Jedediah M. Grant and Rachael Ridgeway Ivins in Salt Lake City. He was first cousin to Apostle Anthony W. Ivins, son-in-law of Brigham Young's Counselor Daniel H. Wells, and brother-in-law to Apostles Orson F. Whitney, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Reed Smoot.

Persistence

Eight days after Heber's birth, his father died of pneumonia. As a student in Brigham Young's family school, his severe astigmatism and resulting headaches interfered with his early education. He overcame childhood taunts of "sissy" with determined efforts to play baseball: "I spent hours and hours throwing the ball at Bishop Edwin D. Woolley's barn, which caused him to refer to me as the laziest boy in the Thirteenth Ward. Often my arm would ache so that I could scarcely go to sleep at night. But I kept on practicing… and eventually played in the nine that won the championship of the territory."

Businessman

1871. Grant began his business career as an office boy and policy clerk for H.R. Mann Company, selling insurance in his spare time.

1880. Formed a syndicate to purchase $350,000 worth of ZCMI stock. Later he served as assistant cashier at Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company; vice-president of the Salt Lake Herald Company; director of Provo Woolen Mills, Deseret National Bank, Oregon Lumber Company, and ZCMI; and president of the State Bank of Utah, Home Fire Insurance Company, Salt Lake Theatre Company, Co-op Wagon and Machine Company, and the Heber J. Grant Insurance Company.

Polygamist

1877. Married Lucy Stringham. In 1884 he married Hulda Augusta Winters and Emily J. Harris Wells. Lucy died in 1893, Emily in 1908, and Hulda in 1951. He was the father of twelve children.

After the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto of 1890, Elder Grant sought permission from President Joseph F. Smith to marry Fanny Woolley, but his request was denied.

Stake President

1880. Called to be president of the Tooele, Utah, Stake at the age of twenty-four, Grant delivered a short speech because, "I ran out of ideas."

Joseph F. Smith commented, "Heber, you said you believe the gospel with all your heart, and propose to live it, but you did not bear your testimony that you know it is true. Don't you know absolutely that this gospel is true?"

"I do not."

"What, you! a president of a stake?"

"That is what I said."

"President Taylor," said Smith, "I am in favor of undoing this afternoon what we did this morning. I do not think any man should preside over a stake who has not a perfect and abiding knowledge of the divinity of this work."

To this Grant replied, "I am not going to complain." "President Taylor," Grant recalled, "had a habit, when something pleased him excessively, of shaking his body and laughing," and he said to President Smith, "Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, he knows it just as well as you do. The only thing that he does not know is that he does know it. It will be but a short time until he does know it. He leans over backwards. You do not need to worry."

Apostle

1882. October 10: Called to the Quorum of the Twelve by President John Taylor after Orson Pratt's death. He was only twenty-five, and the first native Utahn to serve in the Quorum.

When Heber was fifteen, Eliza R. Snow prophesied in tongues and Zina D. H. Young interpreted: eventually Heber would be one of the leading men in the Church. On October 6, 1881, photographer Charles R. Savage told Grant "that within one year [he] would be a member of the Twelve Apostles"; one year and seven days later President John Taylor announced a revelation calling Heber J. Grant to the apostleship. During an 1883-1884 mission to the Moquis Indians in Arizona, Grant reported a vision in which he learned he had been called to be an apostle because his natural father J. M. Grant, and the Prophet Joseph [Heber's father by sealing], had requested it.

Youngest and Last Member of the Council of Fifty

1882. October 10: Accepted as member of the Council of Fifty—its youngest member—just days before the revelation naming him as one of the new members of the Quorum of the Twelve.

So far as is known, the Council of Fifty never convened after its October, 1844, meeting. Grant was the last surviving member of that body.

Civic Career

Served in the Tooele City Council (1881-84), Salt Lake City Council, and the Utah Legislature (1884-85).

1896. His boyhood dream to become the first governor of the State of Utah seemed fulfilled when he received a telegram from the state Democratic convention: "Sixty percent of the convention in Ogden has agreed to vote for you on the first ballot, you are sure to be nominated. We believe it will be unanimous before we get through voting."

He took the telegram to President Wilford Woodruff and asked him how he should respond. President Woodruff replied: "Haven't you, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, sufficient wisdom to answer a telegram without bothering me?"

Grant responded, "Thank you, Brother Woodruff; thank you. Had you thought that I could do any good for [p.102] the people, you would have said, Heber, the Lord bless you. I hope you will be elected. I shall send a telegram that it will be a personal favor to me if my name never comes before the convention."

Missionary to Japan

1901. The moment he heard President George Q. Cannon announce in general conference the decision to open a mission to Japan, Grant felt he would be called to preside. But when the call actually came in a meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, he was gloomy. "I was owing a little over one hundred thousand dollars. I had two wives, neither one having a home; my mother's home was mortgaged at that time for three thousand dollars."

After the meeting, John W. Taylor prophesied privately to Heber, "You shall be blessed of the Lord and make enough money to go to Japan a free man financially." Through deft financial maneuvers, he "went to Japan a free man, financially."

As mission president (1901-1903) Grant was unable to learn Japanese and saw only two persons baptized, both of whom soon left the Church. His sense of personal failure was assuaged only by the fact that a generation of missionaries had little more success in Japan.

In 1924 Church President Heber J. Grant closed the mission to Japan.

Seventh President of the Church

1918. From 1903 to 1906 he had served as president of the British and European Missions. In 1916 he became President of the Quorum of the Twelve, and on the death of Joseph F. Smith became seventh president of the Church. His term of almost twenty-seven years is second only to the tenure of Brigham Young.

President Grant ushered the Church into an era of prosperity and popularity. Missionary work increased dramatically and Church membership grew from under 500,000 to more than 950,000. In 1922 he became the first [p.103] Church president to deliver a gospel message by radio. He dedicated the Hawaiian Temple (1919), the Alberta Temple (1923), and the Arizona Temple (1927).

He regretted his inability to sing on key: "I have, all the days of my life, enjoyed singing very much. When I was a little boy ten years of age I joined a singing class, and the professor told me that I could never learn to sing. Some years ago I had my character read by a phrenologist and he told me that I could sing, but said he would like to be forty miles away while I was doing it. I was practicing singing a few weeks ago in the Templeton building, and the room where I was doing so was next to that of a dentist. The people in the hall decided that someone was having his teeth extracted."

During the Depression, President Grant inaugurated the Church Welfare Program: "Work is what keeps people young … We should have an ambition, we should have a desire to work to the full extent of our ability. Working eight or nine hours a day has never injured me, and I do not believe it will injure anyone else. Work is pleasing to the Lord."

Bedridden President

1940. Due to a stroke, President Grant was a semi-invalid the last five years of his life. Despite a brief and dramatic recuperation, he was increasingly unable to attend public meetings. For several years he did not attend regular meetings of the First Presidency or the weekly temple meetings of the Quorum of the Twelve. Although John Taylor had been bedridden during the last months of his life, Grant was the first Church president to be physically incapacitated for years. He was informed of administrative developments at his home by Counselor J. Reuben Clark.

Death

1945. Died of cardiac failure in Salt Lake City at the age of eighty-eight. Buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Sources
Allen, James B., and Leonard, Glen M. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976.
Conference Reports, April 1900, October 1941.
Durham, G. Homer. Gospel Standards: Selections from the Writings of Heber J. Grant. Salt Lake City: Improvement Era 1941.
Gibbons, Francis M. Heber J. Grant: Man of Steel, Prophet of God. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979.
Jorgensen, Victor W., and Hardy, B. Carmon. "The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History." Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980):4-36.
Quinn, D. Michael. "The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945." Brigham Young University Studies 20 (Winter 1980):163-197.
_____. "Organizational Development and Social Origins of the Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932: A Prosopographical Study." Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1973.
Salt Lake City, Utah. LDS Church Archives. Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 8 April 1894.
_____. Heber J. Grant Correspondence and Journals.
Walker, Ronald W. Crisis In Zion: Heber J. Grant and the Panic of 1893." Sunstone 5 (January-February 1980):26-34.

	A Book of Mormons Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker Copyright 1982, Signature Books Salt Lake City, Utah Contents


	Heber J. Grant (1856-1945)

		Heber J. Grant was a financier and seventh president of the Church. Photograph courtesy LDS Church Archives.


	Family Background 1856. March 22: Born Heber Jeddy Grant to Apostle Jedediah M. Grant and Rachael Ridgeway Ivins in Salt Lake City. He was first cousin to Apostle Anthony W. Ivins, son-in-law of Brigham Young's Counselor Daniel H. Wells, and brother-in-law to Apostles Orson F. Whitney, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Reed Smoot. Persistence Eight days after Heber's birth, his father died of pneumonia. As a student in Brigham Young's family school, his severe astigmatism and resulting headaches interfered with his early education. He overcame childhood taunts of "sissy" with determined efforts to play baseball: "I spent hours and hours throwing the ball at Bishop Edwin D. Woolley's barn, which caused him to refer to me as the laziest boy in the Thirteenth Ward. Often my arm would ache so that I could scarcely go to sleep at night. But I kept on practicing… and eventually played in the nine that won the championship of the territory." Businessman 1871. Grant began his business career as an office boy and policy clerk for H.R. Mann Company, selling insurance in his spare time. 1880. Formed a syndicate to purchase $350,000 worth of ZCMI stock. Later he served as assistant cashier at Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company; vice-president of the Salt Lake Herald Company; director of Provo Woolen Mills, Deseret National Bank, Oregon Lumber Company, and ZCMI; and president of the State Bank of Utah, Home Fire Insurance Company, Salt Lake Theatre Company, Co-op Wagon and Machine Company, and the Heber J. Grant Insurance Company. Polygamist 1877. Married Lucy Stringham. In 1884 he married Hulda Augusta Winters and Emily J. Harris Wells. Lucy died in 1893, Emily in 1908, and Hulda in 1951. He was the father of twelve children. After the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto of 1890, Elder Grant sought permission from President Joseph F. Smith to marry Fanny Woolley, but his request was denied. Stake President 1880. Called to be president of the Tooele, Utah, Stake at the age of twenty-four, Grant delivered a short speech because, "I ran out of ideas." Joseph F. Smith commented, "Heber, you said you believe the gospel with all your heart, and propose to live it, but you did not bear your testimony that you know it is true. Don't you know absolutely that this gospel is true?" "I do not." "What, you! a president of a stake?" "That is what I said." "President Taylor," said Smith, "I am in favor of undoing this afternoon what we did this morning. I do not think any man should preside over a stake who has not a perfect and abiding knowledge of the divinity of this work." To this Grant replied, "I am not going to complain." "President Taylor," Grant recalled, "had a habit, when something pleased him excessively, of shaking his body and laughing," and he said to President Smith, "Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, he knows it just as well as you do. The only thing that he does not know is that he does know it. It will be but a short time until he does know it. He leans over backwards. You do not need to worry." Apostle 1882. October 10: Called to the Quorum of the Twelve by President John Taylor after Orson Pratt's death. He was only twenty-five, and the first native Utahn to serve in the Quorum. When Heber was fifteen, Eliza R. Snow prophesied in tongues and Zina D. H. Young interpreted: eventually Heber would be one of the leading men in the Church. On October 6, 1881, photographer Charles R. Savage told Grant "that within one year [he] would be a member of the Twelve Apostles"; one year and seven days later President John Taylor announced a revelation calling Heber J. Grant to the apostleship. During an 1883-1884 mission to the Moquis Indians in Arizona, Grant reported a vision in which he learned he had been called to be an apostle because his natural father J. M. Grant, and the Prophet Joseph [Heber's father by sealing], had requested it. Youngest and Last Member of the Council of Fifty 1882. October 10: Accepted as member of the Council of Fifty—its youngest member—just days before the revelation naming him as one of the new members of the Quorum of the Twelve. So far as is known, the Council of Fifty never convened after its October, 1844, meeting. Grant was the last surviving member of that body. Civic Career Served in the Tooele City Council (1881-84), Salt Lake City Council, and the Utah Legislature (1884-85). 1896. His boyhood dream to become the first governor of the State of Utah seemed fulfilled when he received a telegram from the state Democratic convention: "Sixty percent of the convention in Ogden has agreed to vote for you on the first ballot, you are sure to be nominated. We believe it will be unanimous before we get through voting." He took the telegram to President Wilford Woodruff and asked him how he should respond. President Woodruff replied: "Haven't you, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, sufficient wisdom to answer a telegram without bothering me?" Grant responded, "Thank you, Brother Woodruff; thank you. Had you thought that I could do any good for [p.102] the people, you would have said, Heber, the Lord bless you. I hope you will be elected. I shall send a telegram that it will be a personal favor to me if my name never comes before the convention." Missionary to Japan 1901. The moment he heard President George Q. Cannon announce in general conference the decision to open a mission to Japan, Grant felt he would be called to preside. But when the call actually came in a meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, he was gloomy. "I was owing a little over one hundred thousand dollars. I had two wives, neither one having a home; my mother's home was mortgaged at that time for three thousand dollars." After the meeting, John W. Taylor prophesied privately to Heber, "You shall be blessed of the Lord and make enough money to go to Japan a free man financially." Through deft financial maneuvers, he "went to Japan a free man, financially." As mission president (1901-1903) Grant was unable to learn Japanese and saw only two persons baptized, both of whom soon left the Church. His sense of personal failure was assuaged only by the fact that a generation of missionaries had little more success in Japan. In 1924 Church President Heber J. Grant closed the mission to Japan. Seventh President of the Church 1918. From 1903 to 1906 he had served as president of the British and European Missions. In 1916 he became President of the Quorum of the Twelve, and on the death of Joseph F. Smith became seventh president of the Church. His term of almost twenty-seven years is second only to the tenure of Brigham Young. President Grant ushered the Church into an era of prosperity and popularity. Missionary work increased dramatically and Church membership grew from under 500,000 to more than 950,000. In 1922 he became the first [p.103] Church president to deliver a gospel message by radio. He dedicated the Hawaiian Temple (1919), the Alberta Temple (1923), and the Arizona Temple (1927). He regretted his inability to sing on key: "I have, all the days of my life, enjoyed singing very much. When I was a little boy ten years of age I joined a singing class, and the professor told me that I could never learn to sing. Some years ago I had my character read by a phrenologist and he told me that I could sing, but said he would like to be forty miles away while I was doing it. I was practicing singing a few weeks ago in the Templeton building, and the room where I was doing so was next to that of a dentist. The people in the hall decided that someone was having his teeth extracted." During the Depression, President Grant inaugurated the Church Welfare Program: "Work is what keeps people young … We should have an ambition, we should have a desire to work to the full extent of our ability. Working eight or nine hours a day has never injured me, and I do not believe it will injure anyone else. Work is pleasing to the Lord." Bedridden President 1940. Due to a stroke, President Grant was a semi-invalid the last five years of his life. Despite a brief and dramatic recuperation, he was increasingly unable to attend public meetings. For several years he did not attend regular meetings of the First Presidency or the weekly temple meetings of the Quorum of the Twelve. Although John Taylor had been bedridden during the last months of his life, Grant was the first Church president to be physically incapacitated for years. He was informed of administrative developments at his home by Counselor J. Reuben Clark. Death 1945. Died of cardiac failure in Salt Lake City at the age of eighty-eight. Buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery. Sources Allen, James B., and Leonard, Glen M. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976. Conference Reports, April 1900, October 1941. Durham, G. Homer. Gospel Standards: Selections from the Writings of Heber J. Grant. Salt Lake City: Improvement Era 1941. Gibbons, Francis M. Heber J. Grant: Man of Steel, Prophet of God. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979. Jorgensen, Victor W., and Hardy, B. Carmon. "The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History." Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980):4-36. Quinn, D. Michael. "The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945." Brigham Young University Studies 20 (Winter 1980):163-197. _____. "Organizational Development and Social Origins of the Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932: A Prosopographical Study." Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1973. Salt Lake City, Utah. LDS Church Archives. Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 8 April 1894. _____. Heber J. Grant Correspondence and Journals. Walker, Ronald W. Crisis In Zion: Heber J. Grant and the Panic of 1893." Sunstone 5 (January-February 1980):26-34.