Clee was born in 1888 in Thompsonville, Connecticut to Frederick and Margaret (Kelley) Clee.
Among those settlers was Emily Trask Cutler, one of the plural wives of Heber C. Kimball, counselor to Young and daughter of John Alpheus Cutler, who founded the Cutlerite sect at Manti, Iowa while en route with the main body to the Salt Lake Valley.