Ray Chase Kimball (1869-1960)

Ray Chase Kimball, grandson of Mormon pioneer leader Heber C. Kimball, was born to Heber Parley Kimball and Phebe Judd in Salt Lake City in 1869. As a young man tending sheep on the dry sagebrush plains of the west dessert of the Salt Lake Valley, he was enticed by the stories his brother told him of the wild beauty of what became the Teton Valley of Idaho. He soon after moved to this valley and was influential in the settling of this mountainous region of southeast Idaho and the founding of Driggs, the largest town in Teton Valley. He was a rancher and store owner and later became the president of the Teton Valley Bank. Shortly after his arrival in the valley, he met and married Illinois-immigrant Emily Seymour and they were the parents of five children. Kimball later married Elizabeth Clark (known as Bess) after the death of Emily and moved to Farmington, Utah where he raised his grandson, Newel Kimball, after the death of his daughter (Lois Kimball Wilkie) and Newel's mother at the early age of 23. Ray Kimball is the brother to Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy, the mother of famous clothing designer and wife of Rudolph Valentino, Natacha Rabova.