1910 Main Street - Fourth Street over to Third Street...

323 Main

Henry Hoffmann & Company - today The Market Place
Before this brick building there were wooden structures.
Then Hoffmann built this brick building - not sure if it was torn down or destroyed in a fire.
Then the two-story Rober-Wehrmann brick building was built - it had 2 fires & the 2nd one destroyed it in 1939.
After the fire the present day one-story structure was built.

319 Main on the left half of the building - probably Moershell & Son.
317 Main on the right you can read Moershell & Son - which is today the Manning Pharmacy.

Ferdinand Moershell returned to Manning in the fall of 1901 and re-engaged in the mercantile business. In the summer of 1904, he took his son, Floyd, into business with him under the firm name of F. Moershell and Son. The firm continued until July 1913. In 1902, Mr. Moershell became slightly afflicted physically and this trouble was accentuated by the suddenness of the news in February 1905 that the store was afire. This fire destroyed his entire business. The business was opened up again in the following May. On account of increasing bodily infirmity, Mr. Moershell was obliged to retire from active participation in the business of the firm in the summer of 1909. He continued to live in Manning until March 1914.

315 Main - Grover Herman Grau, Druggist (left)
Notice the boy walking in bare feet
313 Main Street (right) - Manning Telephone Company

I can't read any business signs for the rest of the buildings to the north.

Here is the backside of the 1910 postcard.

The family name of Levens/Leavens is not a Manning name but the person who sent it, Mrs. Witt, is an area name.
Unfortunately she did not sign a first name or initial.
It also could be that she was visiting or had a stop-over in Manning on one of the 3 different passenger trains and her last name of Witt has no connections to Manning.
But I'm guessing she probably either married a Manning Witt, and or she also could have been born/lived here for a while.

The E-bay bid included a 2nd postcard (shown below) and fortunately I was able to figure out a little more about the Levens/Leavens family from the information on back, but nothing to show a connection to Manning.

Methodist Church, Lake City, Iowa

From R.L.S. (unknown) to D.E. Leavens in Moorhead, Iowa

This was the information I needed to figure out more about the family.
Darwin Elias Leavens and his wife was Mina (Burgess), who both moved away from Moorhead and are buried in Steptoe, Washington.
The only Leavens/Levens buried in Moorhead that I can find is Charles Leavens. He is one of several children of Darwin & Mina.

So the information on the backs of both of these postcards doesn't provide much information about Manning, but someday I may run into other postcards or run into the Leavens name or who Mrs. Witt might be in a Manning family collection or scrapbook.

This is why it is imperative that anyone with old Manning pictures, scrapbooks, history, documents, etc. get those things to me so I can scan them and maybe I'll find something connected to these postcards or have little tidbits of information about other aspects of Manning's history.