Hyrum Manwaring

Hyrum Manwaring (June 23, 1877 – September 8, 1956), A.B., M.A., was the president of Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho from 1930 to 1944. Ricks was the precursor to today’s Brigham Young University–Idaho, a private university operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the LDS Church or, informally, the Mormons). Manwaring overcame delayed schooling – he was almost 29 when he graduated from high school – to become a dedicated champion of education. He led Ricks through difficult times, when dissolution seemed inevitable, to a point where its future was assured. After retiring from the presidency in 1944, Manwaring continued to teach, and take classes himself, until near his death.

Hyrum Wilkins Manwaring was born June 23, 1877 in Granger, Utah, an early town that is now part of a Salt Lake City suburb. His father, Herbert, came to the U. S. from Sandbach, England in 1869. His mother, Clarissa Wilkins, was the first-generation daughter of Charles Wilkins, also an emigrant from England. He was the oldest in a family of eight boys and had to begin working at an early age. That severely crippled his educational opportunities. Hyrum had to leave school after the sixth grade.

Around 1890, homesteads near Salt Lake City entered what Hyrum called “a land boom.” So his father sold their place and they moved to the Springville-Mapleton area, south of Provo. A couple years later, Manwaring left home for good to become a section hand on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which was then building branch lines to various Utah coal mines. Despite his youth – he was just fifteen years old – Hyrum held his own and was able to earn a man’s wages.

However, living in a bunkhouse with “rough, profane men,” Hyrum was subjected to many temptations. He later admitted that he had indulged in chewing and smoking tobacco, gotten drunk with “the boys,” and sometimes exhibited a mean disposition. Yet he had at least managed his money wisely and avoided associations with what were then called “loose women.”

In the spring of 1894, Hyrum “accidentally dated” – his words – a local girl named Bessie Bird, taking her to a community dance. He does not explain his choice of terms in his memoir, other than stating that she was very young, under fifteen. A week later, they met again by “another mere accident.”

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