Rev Jonathan Leavitt

• BIRTH 11 Jan 1731 Suffield, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
• DEATH 9 Sep 1802 (aged 71) Heath, Franklin County, Massachusetts, USA
• BURIAL South Cemetery, Heath, Franklin County, Massachusetts, USA
• PLOT 2-R-16-12 MEMORIAL ID 98874117 Photos by Eric Weber

Rev Jonathan Leavit, son of Joshua Leavitt (1687-1732) & 2nd wife Mary (Winchell) Leavitt 1st married Sarah Hooker 1761-1791, 2nd married Widow Tirzah (Field) Ashley 27 August 1792-1797 and 3rd married Widow Mary (Todd) Foote 28 March 1798-1816.

Congregational minister; was of Suffield Ct., graduated Yale 1758; ordained at Walpole, N.H. 21 May 1761, dismissed after two years; installed at Charlemont 1767, dismissed 1775, continued to live in the same spot until his death at age 71 in 1802; lived in the part of Charlemont that became part of Heath in 1785; married Miss Sarah Hooker of Farmington, Ct., they had eleven sons and one daughter; Rev. Joshua Leavitt, office agent of the Independent, is his grandson; married for his second wife the widow of Rev Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield; he was a man of talent, hospitable, sociable, and Christian in his deportment; sound in his theology but his prayers were long and his sermons dry; the church became extinct after his dismissal and the West church was then organized 6 June 1788 [4]

The descendants of Rev. Thomas Hooker, Hartford, Connecticut, 1586-1908 : being an account of what is known of Rev. Thomas Hooker's family in England : and more particularly concerning himself and his influence upon the early history of our country : also all items of interest which it has been possible to gather concerning the early generations of Hookers and their descendants in America by Hooker, Edward; Hooker, Margaret Huntington, published 1909 pg 68]

Inscription
In memory
of the Rev'd Jonathan Leavitt
who died the 9th of Sep 1802
in the 72 year of his age
He was A Follower of those who through faith & patience inherit the
promises

Parents
Joshua Leavitt 1687–1732

Spouses
Sarah Hooker Leavitt 1742–1791 (m. 1761)
Tirzah Field Leavitt 1749–1797 (m. 1792)
Mary Todd Leavitt 1742–1815 (m. 1798)

Siblings
Hannah Leavitt 1714–1732
Joshua Leavitt 1716–1732
Jemima Leavitt Grant 1721–1790
John Leavitt 1724–1798

Children
Clarissa Leavitt 1762–1798
Jonathan Leavitt 1764–1830
Hart Josiah Leavitt 1765–1836
David Leavitt 1769–1840
Roger Leavitt 1771–1840
Hooker Leavittm1785–1842

[1] https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Jonathan_Leavitt_%287%29

[2] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98874117/jonathan-leavitt

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Leavitt_(minister)

[4] Biographical sketches of the Congregational pastors of New England by Emerson Davis (1798-1866) Volume: v.1 pg 276]

Rev. Jonathan Leavitt spent the rest of his life at his home in Heath,[21] and retired from the ministry.[22] His wife, the former Sarah Hooker, died at Heath on October 11, 1791, when a daughter gave her the wrong medicine. Her husband Rev. Leavitt died on September 9, 1802, aged 71. In the year before his death, in 1801, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt published a book entitled The New Covenant and the Church's Duty.[23]

The couple had 12 children – 11 sons and an only daughter.[24] The daughter was Clarissa, who died unmarried; his sons were Jonathan, Hart, Joshua, David, Roger, Erastus, Roswell, Thomas, Samuel, Horatio, and Hooker.[25] Jonathan Leavitt, the eldest son of Rev. Jonathan, became a prominent Greenfield, Massachusetts, attorney, judge, state senator and businessman. Two grandchildren became ministers – one of them was the noted abolitionist publisher and editor Rev. Joshua Leavitt, whose brothers Roger Hooker Leavitt and Hart Leavitt operated Underground Railroad stations to shelter escaped slaves on their journeys north to Canada.[14]

References

Lieut. Joshua Leavitt was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1687, and subsequently moved to Suffield, Connecticut, then part of Massachusetts, where he married Hannah Devotion.[1]

The Winchell home in Suffield remained in the Leavitt family for generations. Rev. Jonathan Leavitt conveyed his interest in the home of his mother's Winchell family to his brother John Leavitt in 1752.[2]

Rev. Jonathan Leavitt had two sisters, Hannah and Mary. By his first wife, Hannah Devotion, Lieut. Joshua Leavitt had another seven children, including Rev. Freegrace Leavitt, half-brother to Rev. Jonathan Leavitt.[3]

Documentary History of Suffield, Hezekiah Spencer Sheldon, Printed by the Clark W. Bryan Company, Springfield, Mass., 1879

Genealogy of the Ancestors and Descendants of John White of Wenham and Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1638–1905, Vol. III, Almira Larkin White, Press of Nichols the Printer, Haverhill, Mass., 1905

Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Vol. II, May, 1745–May, 1763, Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1896

The choice of the ministry probably came naturally to Jonathan Leavitt, whose great-great-grandfather John Leavitt was founding deacon of Old Ship Church, the only remaining 17th-century Puritan meeting house in America.

Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Vol. IV, Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1907

The ministerial office, a good work, Rev. Freegrace Leavitt, National Library of Australia Catalogue The Descendants of Rev. Thomas Hooker, Hartford, Connecticut, 1586–1908, Edward Hooker, Margaret Huntington Hooker, E. R. Andrews Printing Company, Rochester, N. Y., 1909

Historical Sketch of Col. Benjamin Bellows, Founder of Walpole, Henry Whitney Bellows, John A. Gray, Printer, New York, 1855

Rev. Jonathan Leavitt's father Lieut. Joshua Leavitt of Suffield, Connecticut, had also been an early slaveholder, whose slave 'Princess' died at Suffield on November 5, 1732.Documentary History of Suffield in the Colony and Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1660–1749, Hezekiah Spencer Sheldon, Clark W. Bryan Company, Springfield, Mass., 1879

Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley, George S. Roberts, Robson & Adee, Publishers, Schenectady, N. Y., 1906

A History of the Churches and Ministers, and of Franklin Association in Franklin County, Massachusetts, Theophilus Packard Jr., S. K. Whipple and Company, Boston, 1854

Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. III, E.W. Metcalf & Co., Cambridge, 1833

Massachusetts Loyalists in the Revolutionary War, Lorenzo Sabine, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1864, usgwarchives.net[permanent dead link]

Divisions Throughout the Whole: Politics and Society in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, 1740–1775, Gregory H. Nobles, Cambridge University Press, 1983 ISBN 0-521-52503-9 ISBN 978-0-521-52503-9

The New England Gazetteer, John Hayward, Published by Otis Clapp, Boston, Mass., 1857

Despite his banishment by the town of Charlemont, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt was giving sermons at Yale College in 1785, according to the diary of Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College and the father-in-law of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt's son Jonathan.[4]

Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, Lorenzo Sabine, Vol. II, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1864

In 1790 a new church was built at Heath, and the pews were sold to the highest bidders. Rev. Jonathan Leavitt bought rights to the most prominent pew for £8 6s.[5]

When the town of Heath later incorporated itself in 1794, it made a point of protecting itself in its incorporation papers from any liabilities it might incur as a result of the residency of the controversial Rev. Leavitt might bring upon the town.[6]

Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Vol. IV, Published for the Society, Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, New Haven, Conn., 1888

The family register of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt is in the collection of Memorial Hall, Deerfield, Massachusetts.[7] Heath – Land Titles and Pioneer Settlers, History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, Vol. II, Louis H. Everts, 1879, franklincountyhistory.com

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. LIX, Henry Fitz-Gilbert Waters, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Published by the Society, Boston, Mass., 1905

   History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Vol. IV, Published by the Association, Press of T. Morey & Son, Greenfield, Mass., 1906

Further reading

   A Sketch of the Life and Character of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, the first Minister of Charlemont, Mass., by William H. Leavitt, published by John H. Leavitt, Waterloo, Iowa, 1904

External links

   Gravestone of Lieut. Joshua Leavitt, father of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, died October 22, 1732, Old Burying Ground, Suffield, Connecticut, smugmug.com

Photographs (Jonathan Leavitt), Colonial Clergyman. Ambrotype photograph of an illustration of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt. Artfact.com