Loris Orian Wood Manson was born in Irwinton, Ga.  March 22, 1889, the daughter of Dr. Joshua Soule Wood, and Emma Graybill Wood, daugher of  Col. Tully Graybill and Annabella Tucker Graybill, Washington County natives. . Her siblings were Mamie Emma, married to Rev. Marvin Williams; Dr. Hubert Clarence  Wood, maried to Pearl Cannon ; Laura Ivaleen married to John Norton Todd; Rosa Lillian married to Lawson J. Pritchard, Ethel Claire married to George Henry Carswell and Annie "Nan" Graybill married and divorced  James J. Ragan.
      Orian attended Talmadge Institute in Irwinton and. She entered Wesleyan College in Macon but ill health forced her to give it up.  About 1907 she married Frank Crawford Manson of Jonesboro, Clayton County, son of Judge Zackary Taylor Manson.  Their son Frank Crawford Manson Jr, was born about 1908. He was elected state representative from the thirty-fifth district in Clayton County from 1921 - 1922 and died in Atlanta in 1933.

           Among her many accomplishments Mrs. Manson was the assistant editor and business of the Irwinton Bulletin for several years, president of Irwinton improvement club in 1917, chairman of Wilkinson County Council of Defense, did state Red Cross work,  state officer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and  member of the State Memorial Commission appointed by Gov. Dorsey in 1920.  In March 1919 Mrs. Manson was chairman of the Wilkinson County Victory Loan committee. According to Victor Davidson's History of Wilkinson County she "was instrumental in having memorial to General Conference of the M.E. Church, south, passed by the North Georgia Conference, which later resulted in a law requiring all young ministers entering the conferences of this church to refrain from the use of tobacco in any form."

      Oct. 20, 1919 she was elected  elected to the board of managers of the Georgia Training School for Boys in Milledgeville  as secretary and treasurer. The board took charge January 1 and at their earnest request, Mrs. Manson consented to act as a special teacher and to keep in close touch with the work and to try to carry out the ideals of her board, required that she make her home at the school. "This she has done," so one of the reports of the board states, "at a personal sacrifice to herself"  She moved into the training school in January 1920  where she was a resident member of the board of managers.

      Her first report to the governor was captioned "The Purpose of the Boys' Training School.  To train a 'delinquent' or 'neglected' boy to make a good citizen; to teach him honesty, truthfulness, obedience, thoroughness in work, good manners, and cleanliness in body and mind; to teach him a trade so that he will be an asset instead of a liability to the State; to give him the education proscribed for the youth of Georgia through the course of study arranged by the State educational authorities. Through text-book practice, and example, to teach him to reverence the laws of his community, country and God, to regard the Bible as the guide for happiness in his life and the great eternity to come."

     In 1921 she was elected Superintendent of the Georgia Training School for Boys located at Milledgeville by the Board of Trustees of the institution, the only woman in the world at that time to hold such a position.

    She died at the much too young age of 36 in a Nobles Sanitarium in Atlanta July 3, 1925 of tubercular peritonitis which she endured for 5 months. Her funeral was held  at the Union Methodist Church in Irwinton July 4, 1925 and she was buried in Irwinton Masonic Cemetery.
 
 

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