Manchester United Methodist Church Preserves Memory of Civil War Veterans

Manchester Road is a typical, bustling suburban street lined with a variety of modern attractions, so it is difficult to imagine that 150 years ago this road was frequently traveled by men fighting the bloodiest war in American history.

“Manchester Road was a main East-West road that both Union and Confederate soldiers used,” local historian John Avery said.

“It was not uncommon for a regiment or a small company to march through.”

Civil War history is often relegated to classrooms and textbooks, but as Avery will quickly tell you, reminders of that dark period are all around us. Avery, along with , is making sure that the soldiers who fought in that horrific war receive proper recognition.

Four Civil War veterans are buried at the cemetery at Manchester United: Friedrich Stoecker, Christian Fink, Henry Weidman and Mathew Zimmerman, all of whom fought for the Union.

“Most of the Manchester and Ballwin residents were Union sympathizers. St. Louis was strongly Union, and the outlying state was apt to be more Confederate,” Avery said.

The mixture of Union and Confederate ideals made things especially contentious in the state of Missouri and actually play a prominent role in the history of Manchester United. Prior to the Civil War, the Methodist church split into two factions, the Methodist Episcopal Church North and Methodist Episcopal Church South, with each group supporting the cause of its namesake, Avery said.

“Somewhere in the hierarchy of the church there were apparently some Southern sympathizers,” Avery said. “It was not until well into the 1900s, 1936 or 1937, that the two churches merge again. So that was a long standing division.”

Although the current location of Manchester United was home to the Southern church during the separation, a large percentage of the worshippers were believers in the Union cause.

“We are not aware of any Confederate soldiers buried, certainly not in our cemetery, and I am not aware of any buried in the immediate area,” Avery said. “I do a lot of memorial services and marker dedications when we set markers for civil war veterans that have been discovered, and I have done that all over West St. Louis County, and there may be a handful of Confederate soldiers buried in the area.”

So despite the fact that Methodist Episcopal South was located on the current Manchester United grounds, it is not a surprise that all of the soldiers in the cemetery served the Union.

The available information regarding the soldiers buried on the Manchester United grounds is quite limited, but Stoecker, Weidman and Zimmerman lived long lives after the fighting ceased, which was no small accomplishment considering the time period.

“That was not true with a lot of the soldiers,” Avery said. “Many of them had wounds or injuries that may have healed, but not completely, and they always gave them problems. So there were a lot of military residual types of things that the soldiers came home with, and of course there were a lot of amputations. A lot of the soldiers died from amputations. It wasn’t from the amputation itself, it was from the infection. They did not have any idea about infection or how to control it.”

Avery dedicates his time to Civil War marker dedications not only to honor the individuals who fought, but to keep the important lessons of this time period on the consciousness of the general public.

“If you forget the past you are doomed to repeat it, and unfortunately, we have repeated it many times in a war,” he said. “I think it is important to understand the sacrifices that the soldiers have gone through in all wars, but especially in the Civil War, which was fought within our own borders.”

“Many countries have revolutions and that sort of thing. Our country has not really had them,” Avery said. “We had just the one real conflict, the War Between the States. I think it is important to keep in mind that that has happened, and unfortunately, it could happen again unless we keep our history in mind and our wits about us.”