She was born in Gilead, Maine, the daughter of Charles de Grass Manny, a spoolmaker, and Minette Lee Harding, and her family moved to New Brunswick when she was three.She graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1913 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in French and English.[2] In 1947 she was commissioned by Max Aitken Lord Beaverbrook, a wealthy British politician and newspaperman who was born in New Brunswick, and began to collect and record the songs of lumbermen and fishermen in the Miramichi region.[1] Beaverbrook also provided financial assistance to allow her to restore The Manse in Newcastle, New Brunswick which became the local library.[1] Manny also presented items of historical interest in a weekly newspaper column called "Scenes from an Earlier Day".
Beaverbrook House, formerly the Old Manse Library (where Louise Manny worked), and earlier the boyhood home of
Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook
, in Newcastle, Miramichi, New Brunswick (IR Walker 1983)
