Wettershaw Manor
Built 1819
Wettershaw Manor has all the charm of an old plantation house, taking you back to Colonial times and the founding of our great nation.
The home can trace its history back to 1819 when famed naturalist Dr. William Baldwin died at the home while on an expedition up the Missouri River. Baldwin is buried in the cemetery behind the house.
The home belonged to John J. Lowry, one of the University of Missouri's first currators. Lowry was elected twice to the legislature of our new state and was the president of the State Bank in Fayette. Due to financial difficulties, Lowry sold the manor and after passing through several owners it came into the hands of Lodawick Mode in 1841.
Mode died suddently in 1844 causing his family to spend the next five years fighting to save their home only to loose it in 1849. Mode and his sons are also buried in the cemetery behind the house.
The manor was then sold to Levi Parks, a strong anti-war sympathizer. It was in this home that many of the Kingdom of Callaway County Independence organization meetings were held, a plot that would cost Parks his life.
Dr. George R. Jacobs, a wealthy Virginian, then purchased the plantation, as well as many others in the Two Mile Praire area, making him one of the largest land and slave holders in Boone County.
In the Southern tradition, Jacobs sent his sons to the Virginia Military Academy (the West Point of the South) and later they would fight for the Confederate cause.
Both Union and Confederate troops would camp on the Manor grounds during 1861 through 1865. The site of the 1864 Centralia Massacre and subsequent battle took place just fifteen miles from the Manor.