Captain Charles Campbell Manwaring
Captain Charles Manwaring, George Husmann’s business partner and Civil War hero. Photo courtesy of Vicki Shepperd Chin
Charles Campbell Manwaring was born January 25, 1832, in LeRoy, Genesee County, New York. After his family moved to Ohio in 1850, Charles stayed behind and worked on a farm in East Bloomfield, Ontario County. East Bloomfield is near the Finger Lakes region, where grapevines have been cultivated since 1760; he was possibly learning how to grow grapes for wine at this time.
It’s unknown how or why Manwaring ended up in Hermann; if he was growing grapes in New York, his reputation may have led Husmann to contact him with a job offer; he may have heard or read about the Hermann wine industry and decided that was where he wanted to go; he may have just ended up here by chance. Whatever the case, Manwaring and Husmann learned of each other and in 1858, Charles and his younger brother Dan arrived at the Teubner-Husmann home in Hermann and moved in with Husmann and his wife.
Manwaring met Amalia Kielmann, the sister of George’s wife, Louise. They married on December 5, 1861, at St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in Hermann. The Manwarings continued to live with George and Louise at the farm.
During the Civil War, Charles volunteered for service. While deployed, he became ill and was treated in St. Louis for “a violent attack of affliction of the liver and spleen,” which was blamed on the long days, lack of sleep and hard work he was assigned to do during the months he spent escorting trains along the Missouri railroads. During this time, he wrote a letter of resignation. His resignation was accepted, but Missouri enacted a sort of “picked” draft, and because of Charles’ successful history in the military, he was chosen to serve as Captain of the 34th Enrolled Missouri Militia (EMM). By recommendation, he served as provost marshal (the lead of a military police unit) for Missouri’s Second Congressional District, during which time he worked in St. Louis and regularly visited Hermann to see his family and friends.
One weekend in May of 1864, he was visiting his wife, Amalia, and their son, Charles W., back in Hermann, when he was shot by Confederate bushwhackers on the Hermann wharf. He died the next day, on Sunday, May 15, 1864, and was buried near Charles and Josephine Teubner, in the cemetery on top of the cliff to the west of the Teubner-Husmann house.
There are conflicting accounts of Charles’ shooting from a variety of sources, including James Rigg (see below) and the Missouri Republican newspaper. Two soldiers, Schlender and Rippstein were listed as witnesses and gave written affidavits weeks after the event.
The soldiers’ accounts agreed on the following points:
Most likely there was a military parade of some sort taking place, and the town was full of uniformed men.
There was a band of nine bushwhackers disguised as Union soldiers that Charles found suspicious (bushwhackers were anti-Union bandits in Missouri who fought Union soldiers and civilians using guerilla tactics).
Charles Manwaring attempted to arrest these men on Hermann’s wharf and one of them shot him in the back of the head.
Manwaring was taken home to the Teubner-Husmann house and declared “hopeless.” He was evidently unrecognizable as the bullet entered through the back of his head and exited through his face; he died after a day while in the care of Dr. Feldmann.
An account from the journal of James H. Rigg, who witnessed Capt. Charles Manwaring’s assault:
Seven strange men dressed in militia uniforms came riding through Hermann and requested that the ferry boat take them across the river. Because they were strangers, Captain Manwaring approached them on the bank of the river to ask who they were, and they told him they were soldiers from a militia in another county, carrying a dispatch to the northern side of the Missouri River. Manwaring requested that they show him their papers, but they refused on grounds that it was private. Manwaring told them they could not cross the river at Hermann, in that case. The men said they would cross somewhere else, and they rode off the boat. Captain Manwaring grabbed the bridle of the leader, who was holding a revolver in his hand, and told the strangers that they could not leave Hermann until he knew who they were. The leader then stood in his stirrups, yelled “Clear Hell’s Kitchen!” and fired his revolver at Manwaring. The other men in the group then drew their revolvers and began whooping and shooting into the crowd, causing a mass panic as they escaped unharmed. It was found then that Manwaring had been shot straight through his head, and he was dead.
Editor’s note: Manwaring was, as we know, not dead — he was taken back to the Teubner-Husmann home and died the next day of his injuries. No one else was killed during the skirmish and a few others were wounded. Later it was learned that there was a large group of Confederate bushwhackers nearby, and the men had been sent in to learn of the situation in Hermann. Interestingly, Rigg here expresses doubt, saying he didn’t believe that they were bushwhackers because it didn’t make sense that they would try to cross the river. Rigg later learned that the seven strange men were in fact bushwhackers, and the man who had shot Manwaring was Col. Joe Perkins. The band of Confederate guerillas had thought that they would be able to cross at Hermann if they were disguised as Union militia men, and had fired when Manwaring threatened to find out who they were.
Amalia Manwaring
Amalia Manwaring (nee Husmann) was sister to Louise Husmann, George Husmann’s wife.
Married Captain Manwaring, they had a child in February of 1864, less than three months before the Captain died at the hands of Confederate Bushwhackers in May of that year.
When George and Louise Husmann left Missouri to begin a new life in Napa Valley, California, Amalia Manwaring and her son, Charles W. Manwaring, went along. They are buried in Tulocay Cemetery in Napa, California. This is the same cemetery where George and Louise Husmann are buried, and in fact the Manwarings are buried in the Husmann plot. Considering this, it seems as though Louise took her son and accompanied her sister and brother-in-law to California after the death of her husband.
Amalia never remarried, and she outlived her only son — who died at 34 — by 17 years.