Adapted from the LDS Biographical Encyclopedia.
Richard Roswell Lyman was a member of the Council of
Twelve Apostles. He was born Nov. 23, 1870, at Fillmore, Millard county,
Utah, the son of Francis M. Lyman and
Clara Caroline Callister. His father was president of the Council of the
Twelve for thirteen years and a member of that Council thirty-six years.
Amasa M. Lyman, the grandfather of
Richard R. Lyman, was a member of the Council of the Twelve for twenty-eight
years. On his mother's side, Richard R. Lyman belonged to the fifth generation
of members of the Church. His great grandfather, John
Smith,the Prophet's uncle, was one of the presiding Patriarchs of the
Church. The mother of this Patriarch also belonged to the Church. Richard
R. Lyman's grandmother, on his mother's side, was Caroline Smith Callister,
the only sister of the late George A. Smith,
who was a counselor to President Brigham
Young.
Of Richard R. Lyman it was said that during his childhood
he never smiled and that while as a little fellow he would jump with delight,
he was a strapping boy before he was induced to laugh. In April, 1878,
at the age of seven years, he moved with his father's family to Tooele,
Tooele county, Utah, where his father had been called to preside over the
Tooele Stake of Zion.
In a school house at Fillmore, with his face turned
toward the south, Richard R. began to study geography. During his twenty-five
or thirty years' experience as a teacher, and in his association with school
teachers, he endeavored to impress the importance of having students who
are beginning the study of geography and the use of maps do so facing the
north. When he went to the school taught by William Foster, in the little
adobe school house in Tooele, slabs with the round side up were used for
the recitation benches; and when home-made wooden benches with backs were
brought into the school room for recitation benches, the school children
looked upon them as a great luxury.
Richard R. Lyman was baptized July 29, 1879, and
soon afterwards ordained a Deacon. For many years after that, he did duty
as a Deacon in the Tooele Ward. At the age of eight (in the summer of 1879),
Richard R. was placed in charge of his father's fine driving team and Concord
buggy. While he was not big enough to hitch the team to the buggy, the
team being unusually full of life, he took pride, under his father's direction
and encouragement, in keeping the horses, harness, buggy and barn in clean
and first class condition. In 1881-1882 he drove team for both his father
and President Heber J. Grant, who had
succeeded his father as president of the Tooele Stake. It always afforded
the boy great joy to meet President Grant at the Tooele station or at Lake
Point with his fine team, and he never forgot with what relish he ate candy
and raisins with President Grant, as they rode together from the station
or went about Tooele county on Stake business.
While President Grant was in Salt Lake City attending
to his personal business Richard R. Lyman, then about eleven years old,
used to stay at the home of Pres. Grant's wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, to
render what protection he could to her and her two baby daughters, Rachel
and Lucy. The family prayers of that good woman as she knelt with her two
little girls and the boy (Richard R. Lyman) made a wonderful impression
upon the boy's mind.
In the fall of 1882, at the age of twelve, Richard
R. was sent to Provo to attend school in the Brigham Young Academy. He
was a student in that institution when the fire occurred which made it
necessary to move the educational institution into another part of the
city.
Richard R. spent two summers working at the "Mill"
located near E T City, on the shore of Great Salt Lake. Here he milked
many cows, assisted in hauling logs for lumber, out of the mountains, etc.
Here also he learned to swim and ride horses, when they were swimming.
While thus riding and herding in Tooele county Richard R. nearly always
carried with him the New Testament, which was given to him by his mother,
with instructions to read it frequently. In accordance with this instruction
he read and re-read the life and works of the Great Master. The policy
of President Francis M. Lyman was to put his boys to work while they were
young, being much more anxious about the kind of training the boys received
than the amount of money they were paid. For two years Richard R. worked
at the ranch of Hyrum E. Booth, near Grantsville, and he regarded the training
given him and hard work he was required to do by Hyrum E. Booth and his
industrious wife and family as one of the most valuable trainings that
came into his life.
An expert gardener from England pruned the trees,
planted and cared for the garden and did the irrigating on the two homes
belonging to Francis M. Lyman in Tooele. When this work was turned over
later to Richard R. as a boy, he followed the example set for him by the
English gardener. The weeds were hoed with regularity, and the gravel walks
about the home were carefully raked and crowned. He also cared for the
trees, the vines, the flowers, the chickens and the cows. Following the
example and teachings of his father, Richard R., during most of his boyhood,
kept a daily journal, and perhaps the most striking feature contained in
this record is the regularity with which the boy attended Priesthood meetings,
Y. M. M. I. A. meetings, Sunday schools and other meetings. In August,
1888, with his sister Mary, he went to the Brigham Young Academy at Provo
to study. At that time this educational institution was under the able
leadership of Karl G. Maeser. Richard R. was ordained a Teacher by Bishop
Thos. Atkin jun. Sept. 16, 1888.
While attending school in Provo, Richard R. began
a courtship with Miss Amy Brown, which covered continuously a period of
eight years. To this girl, whom he married Sept. 9, 1896 (President Joseph
F. Smith performing the ceremony), Richard R. always regarded himself
as greatly indebted for whatever degree of success came to him in the business
world, in the educational field or in Church work.
After a summer of hard work at Grantsville, Richard
R. and his sister Mary were sent by their father to the Brigham Young College
at Logan, which institution then was under the direction of Dr. Joseph
M. Tanner. During this school year (1889-1890), Richard R. began his labors
as an assistant teacher in the college. While in Logan he took out special
certificates in plane and solid geometry, algebra and physiology. The following
year, in Provo, his studies covered trigonometry, analytic geometry, theory
of teaching, psychology, logic, surveying, physics and rhetoric.
During the summer of 1890, Richard R. was employed
as a bookkeeper in the combined jewelry and furniture store of T. B. Cardon
& Co. at Logan, and during the summer of 1891 he was bookkeeper for
the Utah Manufacturing & Building Co. at Mill Creek, near Salt Lake
City. Thus far during his school life Richard R. had been required to furnish
his own clothing, his own books and his own spending money, while his father
had paid his tuition and board. When Richard R. now asked his father for
an opportunity to go East to college, the father offered to lend him the
necessary means for a period of four years, an offer which the son promptly
accepted. Repaying this money and the interest on it at the rate of 10
per cent, required a period of seven years, the principal amounting to
nearly $2500.
Richard R. was ordained an Elder, Aug. 29, 1891,
by Joseph F. Smith and after receiving his endowments in the Logan Temple
he went East to study. The policy of Pres. Francis M. Lyman had been to
keep his sons either at work or in school practically every day. On his
way East, Richard R. spent ten days with his mother at Manassa, Colorado,
she and her family being at that time on the "underground." The ten days
spent in Manassa are remembered vividly by Richard R. because they were
the last ten days he spent with his mother. He separated from the family
Sept. 19, 1891, and his mother died Sept. 21, 1892. He remembers with great
gratitude how his dear mother prepared underclothing, socks and other necessities
to serve him during his four years of college life.
While he attended the University at Ann Arbor, primarily
for the purpose of studying mathematics with the thought of teaching in
the Brigham Young University at Provo, and while he registered in the department
of civil engineering, he devoted a great deal of time to the study of literature,
history and public speaking. During his sophomore year he was elected president
of his class and was elected to the same position a second time during
his senior year. Richard R. spent all his vacations in hard work; one was
devoted to the study of chemistry at the University at Michigan, while
two were devoted to traveling through the State selling school supplies
for a business firm at Chicago, and one was spent as assistant mine and
railroad surveyor in the Tintic mining district, Utah.
The school year 1895-1896 was spent in the Brigham
Young University as principal of the High School and head of the department
of mathematics and physics. Beginning in the fall or 1896 and continuing
until the spring of 1918, Richard R. Lyman, in the University of Utah,
passed through all the grades of instructor, assistant professor, associate
professor and full professor in charge of the department of civil engineering.
He held a full professorship and was head of the department for eighteen
years. With his family Professor Lyman spent the summer of 1902 doing advanced
work in the University of Chicago; thence he went to Cornell University
where he was given a residence credit of three years. While there, with
the class of 1903, he was graduated with the degree of M. C. E. (Master
of Civil Engineering). In the spring of 1904 he was elected by the faculty
of Cornell University to membership in the society of The Sigma Xi, a scientific
organization into which only those who have achieved marked success and
have unusual ability in the line of scientific investigation and research
are supposed to be received. With the class of 1905 he was graduated with
the degree of Ph. D. (Doctor of Philosophy). In one year he was awarded
the only scholarship offered by the college of civil engineering and during
another the only fellowship offered by that same department.
Richard R. Lyman began writing for publication while
he was a student at the University of Michigan. He wrote a series of articles
on "The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor," for the "Juvenile Instructor,"
beginning in May, 1894. In addition to writing a good many articles of
a non-technical character, he wrote scientific articles for the "Engineering
Record," the "Engineering News," and for the "Transactions of the American
Society of Civil Engineers." For the University of Utah Experiment Station,
he prepared one bulletin entitled "The Construction and Maintenance of
Earth Roads," and another on "The Measurement of Flowing Streams." For
his article entitled "Measurement of the Flow of Streams by Approved Forms
of Weirs with New Formulas and Diagrams," which was published in Vol. LXXVII,
page 1189 (1914) of the "Transactions of the American Society of Civil
Engineers," he was awarded the "J. James R. Croe's gold medal," for the
year 1915. This prize is awarded only for a paper which is "judged worthy
of the award of this prize for its merit as a contribution to engineering
science."
From 1909 to 1918 he served as vice-chairman of the
Utah State Road Commission. During this nine years of service the work
of the State Road Commission, from a beginning with little funds, so advanced
that at the expiration of this time the State Road Commission was expending
in the neighborhood of three-fourths to a million dollars annually. The
Utah State Road Commission was created in 1909 and Richard R. Lyman was
one of its original members and its first vice-chairman, which position
he held during the whole nine years.
He served as city engineer of Provo, was transitman
on a railroad survey from Springville through Hobble Creek Canyon toward
the Uintah reservation for Jesse Knight in 1898, and designed and superintended
the construction of waterwork systems in nearly all the towns and smaller
cities of Utah and many in Idaho and Wyoming. For years he conducted an
office as a civil and consulting engineer. At various times he served as
chief engineer and consulting engineer for the following companies: Melville
Irrigation Company, Delta, Utah; Deseret Irrigation Company, Oasis, Utah;
Oasis Land & Irrigation Company, with headquarters in Salt Lake City,
Utah; Delta Land & Water Company of Salt Lake City, Utah; Utah County
Light & Power Company, American Fork, Utah, and Utah Copper Company
of Salt Lake City. He was one of the original directors of the Intermountain
Life Insurance Company and is at present serving as vice-president of this
company. He was also president of the Giant Racer Company, vice-president
of the Ensign Amusement Company, director of the Pleasant Green Water Company,
president of the Lyman-Callister Company, and director of Heber J. Grant
& Co. Bro.
Lyman had experience in the Brigham Young University
as a Priest, administering the Sacrament and doing other similar service.
From the fall of 1895 to the summer of 1896 he acted as a counselor to
Bryant S. Hinckley, superintendent of the Mutual Improvement Associations
of the Utah Stake, when the Utah Stake embraced all of Utah county. In
1897 (Sept. 12th), he was ordained a High Priest by President Angus M.
Cannon and set apart as superintendent of the Y. M. M. I. A. of Salt Lake
Stake, which Stake then included the whole of Salt Lake county. He continued
to serve in this capacity until the spring of 1902, when he, with his family,
went to the University of Chicago, and later to Cornell University. For
several years Bro. Lyman acted as supervisor of the parents' classes of
the Ensign Stake.
He was ordained an Apostle and set apart as a member
of the Council of Twelve Apostles by President Joseph F. Smith April 7,
1918, in the Salt Lake Temple, assisted by Presidents Anthon
H. Lund and Charles W. Penrose
and the members of the Council of the Twelve. Richard R. Lyman and his
wife, Amy B. Lyman, had two children, namely, Wendell Brown Lyman, born
Dec. 18, 1897, in Salt Lake City, and Margaret Lyman, born Sept. 15, 1903,
at Ithaca, New York.
Despite the greatness of his intellect, his spiritual
achievements and a star studded ancestry, Elder Lyman fell into transgression
and was excommunicated November 12, 1943. It is not the policy of the Church
to publicize the reasons for disciplinary action, but it appears that this
was the result of a personal transgression and not apostasy.
Richard R. Lyman was rebaptized into the Church October
27, 1954.
He died December 31, 1963 at Salt Lake City, Utah.
