JOHN MANNING was our 5X Great Grandfather through the Gibbar/Belsha/Hager line. Born in 1745 in St. Mary's County, Maryland, John was the son of Cornelius Manning and Jane Brooke. 

John Manning was among the earliest settlers in what would become Perry County, Missouri, when he purchased land south of the Brazeau Creek in what would eventually become Wittenberg soon after the Louisiana Purchase. A Roman Catholic, Manning was one of several men who signed their name to a document in 1806 requesting that a Catholic priest be sent to the area.

Manning married twice. His marriage to his first wife, Susan Wimsatt in 1768, resulted in five children. After her death in 1779, he married Anastasia Ormsby, and had at least five additional children, one of whom was our fourth great grandfather, Robert Stephen Manning.

John Manning's service as a Private in the Revolutionary War was under the command of Captain H. Lowes with the 3rd Maryland Regiment. The 3rd Maryland Regiment was organized on 27 March 1776 of eight companies from Anne Arundel, Prince George's, Talbot, Harford and Somerset counties of the colony of Maryland. The regiment too part in the following battles: the Battle of Brandywine, Battle of Germantown, Battle of Monmouth, Battle of Camden, Battle of Guilford Court House, Battle of Eutaw Springs and the Battle of Yorktown.​

John Manning signed the Oath of Allegiance to the United States on March 1, 1778 and is the only known veteran of the Revolutionary War to be buried in Perry County, Missouri.

Although it was thought that John Manning and his wife, Anastasia Ormsby, were buried in the St. Rose of Lima Catholic cemetery in Silver Lake, Perry County, Missouri, it is possible that he was actually buried somewhere on land that he owned in Wittenburg, Missouri. Near where he is thought to be buried, a plaque, originally placed at St. Rose of Lima, has been placed in his memory.