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 (D’Ancona).

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.