In Washington, Missouri, the Civil War touched the lives of German immigrant residents and Union soldiers connected to the town's businesses, militia, and voluntary associations. About 1854, John Baptiste Busch, his brother Henry Busch, and Fred Gersie started the Washington Brewery and Malt House at Jefferson and Eighth Street. Busch, born in 1832 in Darmstadt, Germany, had come to the United States in 1849. On October 2, 1864, Confederate troops under General Marmaduke entered Washington during Price's Raid and heavily plundered the brewery, consuming nearly all the beer, even some unfermented beer, and pouring the rest into Busch Creek. In 1870, John B. Busch, then identified in his claim as 1st Lieutenant, Company L, 54th Enrolled Missouri Militia, sought compensation for beer, grain, equipment, horses, wagons, and other property totaling $10,795, but the claim was never paid. Another Washington resident, Henry Conrad Eitzen, born in Bremen, Germany, in 1827, had immigrated in 1844, operated a general store at Second and Jefferson Streets, served briefly in the Mexican War, joined the Franklin County Home Guard at the start of the Civil War, resigned as Assistant Provost Marshal in 1863, rose to Lieutenant Colonel in the 54th Enrolled Missouri Militia, and was later reduced in rank and serving as a private during Price's Raid amid political conflict with Governor Hamilton Rowan Gamble and controversy surrounding Radical Unionists in the militia. Washington also raised Company G, 17th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, the Western Turner Rifles, a German-American Union company shaped by the local Turn Verein founded in 1859 with the help of Franz Wilhelmi. The Turners combined physical training, culture, and civic ideals, and many of their young men entered Union service, campaigning in Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee and taking part in Sherman's March to the Sea before final muster out in 1865. After the war, Washington's veterans and German-American civic institutions remained visible in places such as Turner Hall, built in 1866, and the Grand Army of the Republic camp named for Captain Franz Wilhelmi.