Heber J. Grant was the first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be born in Utah. His parents were Jedediah Morgan Grant and Rachel Ivins Grant. His father died when Heber was only 9 days old. As a boy, he was invited to the Brigham Young home to join the family for evening prayers. Heber did so over a period of years.
He worked to overcome weaknesses such as poor penmanship and baseball skills. To improve on the latter, he would throw a baseball at the barn of his bishop, Edwin D. Woolley. Bishop Woolley perceived this to be evidence of a lack of ambition and called Heber the “laziest boy in the Thirteenth Ward.”
Throughout his life, Heber proved he was just the opposite. Heber married Lucy Stringham in the St. George Temple in 1877. At age 23, he was called as stake president in Tooele, some 25 miles from where he was living. In the day of the horse and buggy, just the travel required much time and effort. This required that he find a home in the Tooele area. The move caused his business ventures to suffer. He drove himself so hard that he experienced nervous convulsions. Heber J. Grant would be afflicted by nervousness and insomnia for the rest of his life (see “Heber J. Grant" by Ronald W. Walker in "The Presidents of the Church," edited by Leonard J. Arrington).
After serving as stake president for about 2½ years, he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. After presiding in missions in Japan and Europe, he lived in a home on South Temple in Salt Lake City before moving to one in the Avenues district of Salt Lake. He lived in that home for the rest of his life.