Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis was born on December 18, 1808, in Amesbury, Essex County, Massachusetts, the third child of Wells Davis and Mary Kelly Davis. As a young man he traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he was converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was adopted into the Heber C. Kimball family. On April 20, 1846, he was forced from Nauvoo and joined the Saints' western migration. During that migration, Heber C. Kimball assigned him to assist in building Winter Quarters at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Davis reached the Salt Lake Valley on September 24, 1848. In keeping with Kimball's desire to erect a flour grist mill on this site, then known as North Mill Cañon, Daniel Davis began clearing the ground on July 18, 1852. On April 20, 1853, the mill's northeastern cornerstone was laid by Issac Hunter and the southeastern stone by Daniel Davis, and the next day Heber C. Kimball dedicated the site. After the mill was completed, Davis assumed its management and lived in an adobe house southeast of the site. The three-story mill was then the largest in Utah Territory. In 1869, the Kimball grist mill was purchased for $8,000 by Bishop John Stoker and others of the Bountiful Cooperative Mercantile from the trustees of the Heber C. Kimball estate. Later, the mill became an entertainment center. Daniel Davis died at age 84 on February 25, 1892.

Bountiful, Utah · United States