No, Brigham Young did not say “You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation."

Brigham Young, 1850 , 

Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Historical Photographs and Special Visual Collections Department, via Wikimedia

 

It was really said by in slightly different forms by Charles Duncan McIver,  the founder and first president of what is now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro . The quote, found here in a clipping from the May 19, 1900 Morning Post of North Carolina. is "When you educate a man you educate a citizen and when you educate a woman you educate a family".  In The Waynesville Courier, dated April 1, 1902 it goes: "When we educate a man we educate an individual, but when we uducate (sic) a mother we educate a whole family". 

Sadly, McIver was speaking about the "white girl" of the "Civilization of the South".

Canadian novelist Marian Engel used a version of the quote in her novel "The Glassy Sea". A researcher at the University of North Carolina wrote to her to ask where she got the quote from and she sent back a handwritten letter saying it was a saying of her father. Engel wrote "The quotation was probably used to justify the filling of the universities with Women while the men were away 1914-18" (World War I). 

Tip of the hat to Facebook user Beth Mary