Maningers lived in Harper County in the 1890s. They spent their days cooking, farming, raising children, and doing countless other everyday chores. Most other people did too.
Now and then in the history of everyday lives, extraordinary events occur.
Continue reading
Recall that Benedict Weyeneth was the first elder of the Apostolic Christian Church in America. He and his wife and family settled in Roanoke, Woodford County, Illinois around 1857.
Our families descend from Benedict’s parents through Benedict’s brother Jacob Weyeneth.
Continue readingThe Maningers arrived in Kansas in January 1885. They brought with them furniture and beds, kitchen, tools, farm implements, and livestock. Awaiting them was a quarter-section farm with a house a mile south of Harper.
The Maningers were moving to Kansas. This wasn’t a case of poor pioneers in a covered wagon with no money and no belongings.
The 1880s dawned clear and bright for Val and Lena Maninger. Things seemed to be going their way. But there was a fever in the air. Kansas fever.
Val and Lena Maninger were settled in. They owned a boot and shoe business in Gridley. They had a growing family.
People in Slabtown and Gridley and Tazewell were leaving their Amish and Mennonite churches to follow a “New Amish” way, one that was more conservative, yet more dynamic and emotional.
These new congregations met in houses and barns until they could build a church.
Val and Lena Maninger would convert too.
Continue readingBy late 1864, Val was back in Woodford County, home from the war. But Val didn’t stay in Farnisville and Woodford County. Why?
Val Maninger lay wounded in a cornfield by Whitney’s Lane. Around him lay the dead and wounded of Company H.
On the morning of May 19th, 1862, the 12th Texas Cavalry had annihilated Company H of the 17th Missouri Infantry in a rural lane near Searcy, Arkansas.
Continue readingIn April 1861, Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor was attacked, starting the Civil War. At that time, the United States Army consisted of 16,000 troops, most posted in small forts west of the Mississippi River.
Family Nibbles 