Richard Roswell Lyman was an American engineer and religious leader who was an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1918 to 1943. Lyman is often noted as the most recent LDS Church apostle to have been excommunicated. In 1943, J. Reuben Clark, the first counselor in the LDS church's First Presidency and the church's de facto leader due to church president Heber J. Grant's poor health, became aware that Lyman had for a number of years been in an intimate relationship with a woman he had earlier been assigned to counsel. The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles convened a disciplinary council to hear the case and Lyman's explanation, after which he was immediately excommunicated. Lyman was rebaptized in 1954 at age 83, and his full priesthood blessings were restored posthumously in 1970.
Early life and family
Lyman was born in Fillmore, Utah Territory, and was closely related to many early leaders of the LDS Church. His father, Francis M. Lyman, was the son of Amasa M. Lyman, both of whom served as LDS Church apostles. His mother was Clara Caroline Callister, whose grandfather was John Smith, church founder Joseph Smith's uncle, and a church Presiding Patriarch. Clara's mother was Caroline Smith Callister, the only sister of apostle George A. Smith, who served with Brigham Young as a counselor in the church's First Presidency. Lyman was ordained an elder of the LDS Church on August 29, 1891, by Joseph F. Smith.
In 1943, the First Presidency discovered that Lyman had long been cohabiting with a woman other than his legal wife. In 1925, Lyman began his relationship with Anna Jacobsen Hegsted, which he defined as a plural marriage. Unable to trust anyone to officiate at the wedding due to the church's ban on the practice, Lyman and Hegsted exchanged vows secretly. By 1943, both were in their seventies. Lyman was excommunicated on November 12, 1943, at age 72; at the time, his legal wife, Amy B. Lyman, was the general president of the Relief Society. The Quorum of the Twelve provided the newspapers with a one-sentence announcement, stating that the grounds for excommunication was a violation of the law of chastity, which was the standard interpretation of new plural marriages performed since the 1904 Second Manifesto. After the excommunication, J. Reuben Clark worried that Lyman might join the Mormon fundamentalist movement. Lyman later returned to the LDS Church through rebaptism on October 27, 1954, but he was not reinstated as an apostle. He died at Salt Lake City, Utah.