27/03/2026
Who is he?
Louis Manigault (One of the international founders of Alpha Sigma Phi 1845) was born in Paris, France, on November 21, 1828, while his mother and father were visiting their ancestral homeland. He descended from French Huguenots who fled La Rochelle, France, because of religious persecution with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Manigaults immigrated to South Carolina where they became very prosperous in the occupations of planting, trading, and merchandising.
The Manigault Family and Louis' maternal ancestors, the Heywards, were among the wealthiest American families in the years from the Revolution to the Civil War. Several of the Charleston, South Carolina homes of the Manigaults and Heywards of this era are now preserved and open to the public.
Because of the extreme wealth of the Manigault Family in Charleston, South Carolina nearly every male member received a European education and took many tours and trips overseas. In 1843, Louis began his preparatory school career at Saint Paul's College in Long Island, New York, where he met and became close friends with a fellow student, Steven Ormsby Rhea. In 1845, Louis entered Yale College where his brother had graduated. He stayed there only two years, although he was characterized as being a strong student who worked hard and enjoyed his studies. Louis left Yale in August 1847, to accompany his older brother on a trip to Europe. One of Louis's greatest regrets, however, was not graduating from Yale. In his diary he wrote:
"The termination at Yale College of my career without graduating from that institution has been a source of much regret to me during my life. I had just reached the period in my studies where a greater degree of pleasure would be attached to them than during my freshman and sophomore years. Could I have received my diploma first and then gone to Europe, this is what I have often thought would have been my best plan."
In 1855, Louis took over running the family rice plantation, Gowrie, near Savannah, Georgia. Frequent travels back and forth to Charleston enabled the Manigaults to be a part of and contribute to the culture of the upper class societies of both Savannah and Charleston.
During the Civil War, Manigault served the South as a special investigator of military operations in the field as an assistant to the Surgeon General. The Manigault family fortune, their commercial enterprises, and Louis' plantation at Gowrie were ruined by the war. At the end of the war, Louis returned to Charleston where he unsuccessfully attempted to repair the war damage to Gowrie. He died in Charleston at age 71, on November 29, 1899.
Source: https://alphasig.org/history