Henry Eyring

Who was Henry Eyring?

Henry Carlos Ferdinand Eyring was a prominent mid-level leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States and Mexico during the 19th and early-20th centuries. He was also mayor of St. George, Utah. Eyring was the grandfather of the chemist Henry Eyring and of Camilla Eyring Kimball the wife of LDS Church president Spencer W. Kimball.

Eyring was born in Coburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in what is today Germany. He was the son of Edward Christian Eyring and Ferdinandina Charlotta Caroline von Blomberg. His mother was the daughter of Viscount Georg Louis von Blomberg who served in the government of King Frederich Wilhelm III of Prussia. Eyring's father was a pharmacist in a long standing family business but he suffered economic reverses and by the time Edward Eyring died in about 1850 Henry was left an orphan with little money.

Eyring received the best education available in Coburg, and about the time his father died became an apprentice drug wholesaler in Vienna. Eyring emigrated to the United States in 1853 and settled in St. Louis, Missouri in 1854.