Family of Moses LEVI and Hannah JACOBS

Born in Bavaria, Hannah Jekel (Jacobs) arrived in Charleston

in 1853 and married Moses Levi, originally from the village of

Bosenbach, Germany. The couple may have known each other in the old

country and may have been distant cousins. They were married in the

home of Moses Winstock and his wife Eva Leah Visanska.

At the time Hannah arrived in South Carolina, Moses Levi was

running a store in Sumter. Under the provisions of their marriage

contract, Levi gave his bride a settlement of two thousand dollars to

be used for her benefit, not to be spent on household expenses. They

stayed in Sumter for three years, then in 1856 moved to the new town

of Manning, where they raised ten children, nine of whom lived to

adulthood: David, Rosa (Weinberg), Mitchell, Ferdinand, Abe, Louis,

Ellen (Iseman), Meyer, and Sallie (DʼAncona).

The story of the Levi family parallels the story of Manning

for its first half century. There they established a business, built a

fine home, and made a fortune which was lost during the Civil War but

re-built by the end of the century.

The son of Jacob Lovy, age 44, a butcher, and Johanna

Grunewald, Moses Levi had immigrated to America five years before

Hannah Jacobs, the woman who would become his wife. Amazingly the

certificate announcing his birth at 7:00 A.M., August 11, 1827,

survives; it was witnessed by a mason and a town employee, suggesting

the family was solidly middle class.

Like many German immigrants to the South, Moses Levi joined

the Confederate Army. He eventually became quartermaster of his

regiment. On April 1, 1865, Levi was taken prisoner at the Battle of

Five Forks during the last Federal attacks on Petersburg, Virginia.

Released from prison three months later, he and several friends walked

back to Manning from Virginia. When he got to the edge of the yard,

the story goes, he called for hot water, clean clothes, and a match to

burn the clothes he was wearing.

Levi discovered that the bales of cotton his family had

accumulated during the war had been burned when Brigadier General

Edward E. Potterʼs army came through. Also consumed in the blaze were

most of his buildings and virtually everything he owned. Losses for

the town of Manning totaled about $103,000. Moses Levi lost $40,000.

Both Moses and Hannah Levi had important buildings in Manning

named after them. In 1899, the year after Moses died, the Manning

Collegiate Institute was about to close because of indebtedness.

Leviʼs family paid off the debt and provided operating funds for the

school, which was renamed the Moses Levi Memorial Institute. The Levi

family gave land and a thousand dollars, in memory of Hannah Levi,

toward the building of Manningʼs first public library, which now

houses the Clarendon County Archives.