Manning, Vannoy Hartrog

26 July 1839–3 Nov. 1892

Vannoy Hartrog Manning, congressman from Mississippi, was born near Raleigh but moved with his parents to Mississippi in 1841. He attended Horn Lake Male Academy in De Soto County, Miss., and the University of Nashville, Tenn. In 1860 he moved to Arkansas, where he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1861, and began a practice in Hamburg. During the Civil War Manning served in the Confederate army as a captain and subsequently as a colonel in the Third Arkansas Infantry and the Second Arkansas Battalion. Captured at the Battle of the Wilderness, he was held as a prisoner of war until August 1865. After the war he practiced law in Holly Springs, Miss.

A Democrat, Manning was elected to the Forty-fifth, Forty-sixth, and Forty-seventh Congresses, serving from 4 Mar. 1877 to 3 Mar. 1883. He presented his credentials as a member-elect to the Forty-eighth Congress but did not qualify, and on 25 June 1884 the seat was awarded to James R. Chalmers, who had contested Manning's election. In 1883 Manning returned to the practice of law in Washington, D.C. He died in Branchville, Prince Georges County, Md., and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C.