Charles F. Hinrichs was born in Warin, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, to C.D. and Louise Priester Hinrichs on 15 February 1828. At the age of sixteen he immigrated to America. Hinrichs returned to Germany in 1847 in order to bring his family to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In 1861 Hinrichs married Malinda Maye. She died in 1879, and the next year he married Belle Cook. Hinrichs had four children: Charles Jr., Arvid, Mary, and Lincoln. Hinrichs was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the author of several religious essays and interpretations of scripture, including the pamphlet Apocalypse Interpreted. Hinrichs enlisted in the Missouri State Militia in 1861 and the following year joined Company L, 10th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry as a first lieutenant. He was promoted to captain in August 1863. Following the war Hinrichs settled near Gillis Bluff in southern Butler County. He engaged in a profitable farming and livestock business and invested in Butler County real estate and mining interests. In 1879, Hinrichs retired and moved to Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where he resided until his death in 1902. In 1881, Hinrichs persuaded a group of Germans to immigrate to America and settle on his land at Gillis Bluff. The settlement became known as Carola. The colonists established a German newspaper, a postal system, and a sawmill and purchased a steamboat, the Belle of Carola, to run between Carola and Poplar Bluff. The handicaps of inept farming practices, an inadequate drainage system, and recurrent epidemics of malaria led to the demise of Hinrichs's colony Less