Gibbs House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Back in 1904, a man named W. M.

Gibbs rolled into the town of Manning with a purpose. He'd come to manage a sawmill for the Carter-Kelly Lumber Company, and Manning was the kind of place that hummed with that sort of ambition. Gibbs, born in 1876, settled in with his wife Leannah, and the two of them took up residence in a house built right around that same year, 1904.

First ones through the door. They'd go on to raise four children inside those walls. Now, a sawmill manager's house isn't just a place to hang your hat.

It's a statement. And this one made a real fine statement. The house is what they call an American foursquare design, touched with Craftsman influences, solid and deliberate, the kind of architecture that says the people inside planned to stay a while.

And stay they did. In 1927, the family enlarged the place, opened it up some, made room for whatever the years were bringing. Gibbs passed in 1938, but the house held on in the family until 1942.

Nearly four decades that one address carried the Gibbs name. Manning itself has thinned out over the years, and that house, still standing, is counted among the very few physical reminders that the community ever existed at all. Some places leave monuments.

Manning left this house, and this house is holding up its end of the bargain.

What the marker says

W. M. Gibbs came to the town of Manning in 1904 as a sawmill manager for the Carter-Kelly Lumber Company. Gibbs (1876 - 1938) and his wife, Leannah, were the first occupants of this c. 1904 house, and here they reared their four children. Enlarged in 1927, the house is an American foursquare design with Craftsman influences. It remained in the Gibbs family until 1942 and is one of the few remaining physical reminders of the Manning community. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1993