Born on November 21, 1825, in Charleston, South Carolina, to English immigrants John and Catherine Norton Man, Ralph Sandiford Man was the son of a brick maker and spent his youth as an apprentice carpenter. At age 22 he left Charleston and traveled through Georgia and Louisiana before arriving in Harrison County, Texas, around 1850, where he met his future business partner, Julian Feild, and his future wife, Julia Alice Boisseau. Around 1854, Man and Feild moved to Fort Worth and, with David Mauch, built a water-powered mill around 1856, the first mill in Fort Worth, near the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River. The mill ground corn and wheat, but drought eventually caused the business to close. Man and Feild then moved to the Walnut Creek community, now known as Mansfield, where they found the ruins of a horse-powered mill owned by Charley Turner; the mill and its house were the only structures in the town at that time. In 1859 they built a new three-story brick wheat and corn mill powered by a small nearby spring, and when it opened in 1860 it is believed to have been the first steam-powered mill in North Texas. After achieving financial success, Man married Julia Alice Boisseau on December 30, 1863; she died in August 1868 at age 25. In 1870 he married Sarah Jane Stephens, who died ten years later. Man had two children with Julia and four with Sarah. Although Julian Feild eventually left Mansfield, Man spent the rest of his life in the community named for him. His membership in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church led him to give the church three acres of his land for use as a cemetery. A quiet and well-respected community member and business owner, Ralph Man died on November 18, 1906, and was buried in the Cumberland Presbyterian section of the Mansfield cemetery.