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136:"It is handed down that, having dragged home a negro slave, a woman, who had run away, by a rope attached to his saddle", according to a history of Walpole, " Colonel Bellows declared that such cruelty should not be submitted to; that he had settled Parson Leavitt, and now he would unsettle him. Ministers, however, were not got rid of so easily in those days. Being settled for life, they had rights which they well understood; and it is plain that some considerable diplomacy was required to shake Mr. Leavitt off."
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Aside from matters of dress, comportment and diction, Leavitt possessed another trait which apparently sealed his fate: he was enamored with
English colonial rule – a delicate subject anywhere in the American colonies, but especially among the hardscrabble rural settlers attempting to scratch a
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Rev. Jonathan
Leavitt spent the rest of his life at his home in Heath, and retired from the ministry. 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
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But the imperious
Leavitt once again got into trouble with his congregation. After arriving with his family to an auspicious beginning, Leavitt's Loyalist sentiments began to rub his congregants the wrong way. The matter of wardrobe might have complicated things. "Mr. Leavitt dressed in the costume
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Leavitt's initial pay at
Walpole was set at £75 sterling, and, as was the custom of the day, the financial terms of his contract were carefully delineated – with annual raises in pay stipulated in the document, as well as free use of a minister's house lot. But Leavitt's tenure was apparently
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Joshua
Leavitt and his wife Mary Thomas (Winchell) Leavitt. Jonathan Leavitt was one of three children of Lieut. Leavitt and his second wife. The family was among the earliest settlers of Suffield, and were prosperous, his father Lieut. Leavitt a well-to-do farmer and officeholder. But before Rev.
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Another ministerial colleague noted that Rev. Leavitt's sermons "are not fresh and beautiful by the imagination, not ardent and overflowing with love, but didactic, dry, and clean, and very long. His services were delivered in a dull monotony, and his prayers were incredibly long, in public and in
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was dispatched to bar the offending reverend. But
Leavitt would not be deterred. He moved his services to the town schoolhouse, where he continued to preach his long sermons for almost another decade. On April 15, 1785, he was finally turned out by the town, and his schoolhouse sermons came to an
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was in full bloom in
Walpole, as elsewhere across the New England states. Rev. Leavitt wore a large, full-powdered wig, "and when he entered the meeting-house, the whole congregation rose to do obeisance to the man in black, who, in his turn, always responded with a full bow." Trailing the prime
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On May 17, 1764, on the eve of a town meeting called to discuss
Leavitt's tenure – and his act of cruelty towards his slave – the minister suddenly accepted a payment from the townsmen for services rendered and agreed to depart. Two years later, in 1767, Rev. Leavitt secured an
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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
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The couple had 12 children – 11 sons and an only daughter. The daughter was
Clarissa, who died unmarried; his sons were Jonathan, Hart, Joshua, David, Roger, Erastus, Roswell, Thomas, Samuel, Horatio, and Hooker.
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of his day", noted a fellow minister. "He wore a great white wig and a cocked up hat, and made a dignified appearance. He would do more execution with one nod of his wig, than you or I could in talking half an hour."
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divine and founder of the state of
Connecticut. Mrs. Leavitt was gotten up in "full suit of brocade lutestring, without any bonnet, holding a fan to shade the sun from her face, as was the fashion 'down country.'"
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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
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end. He then sued his parishioners for his back wages, as well as his loss on the depreciated colonial currency. Ultimately the litigious reverend was awarded some £700, and retired to his home in nearby
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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tenuous from the start. Within three years, he was dismissed by the new congregation. Although the exact reason is unclear, the new Reverend was said to have been spotted being cruel to a
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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
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Leavitt was two years old, his father, a brother and a sister all perished of disease within three days of each other. Nevertheless, Rev. Leavitt and two of his brothers attended
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The Descendants of Rev. Thomas Hooker, Hartford, Connecticut, 1586–1908, Edward Hooker, Margaret Huntington Hooker, E. R. Andrews Printing Company, Rochester, N. Y., 1909
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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.
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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
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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
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banker, and later published a book in 1904, two years before his death, about his controversial ancestor. Written by the banker's brother William Hooker Leavitt, a
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History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Vol. IV, Published by the Association, Press of T. Morey & Son, Greenfield, Mass., 1906
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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.
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Divisions Throughout the Whole: Politics and Society in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, 1740–1775, Gregory H. Nobles, Cambridge University Press, 1983
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living from the Berkshire hill country. Whether because his congregants were hard-pressed, or because they objected to Leavitt's sympathies with mother
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Gravestone of Lieut. Joshua Leavitt, father of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, died October 22, 1732, Old Burying Ground, Suffield, Connecticut, smugmug.com
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Despite his banishment by the town of Charlemont, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt was giving sermons at Yale College in 1785, according to the diary of
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Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Vol. IV, Published for the Society, Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, New Haven, Conn., 1888
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Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. III, E.W. Metcalf & Co., Cambridge, 1833
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of their day, even though he himself was dismissed from one pastorate for allegedly abusing his runaway slave, and from another for his
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Photographs (Jonathan Leavitt), Colonial Clergyman. Ambrotype photograph of an illustration of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt. Artfact.com
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Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, Lorenzo Sabine, Vol. II, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1864
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Historical Sketch of Col. Benjamin Bellows, Founder of Walpole, Henry Whitney Bellows, John A. Gray, Printer, New York, 1855
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Massachusetts Loyalists in the Revolutionary War, Lorenzo Sabine, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1864, usgwarchives.net
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Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley, George S. Roberts, Robson & Adee, Publishers, Schenectady, N. Y., 1906
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Documentary History of Suffield, Hezekiah Spencer Sheldon, Printed by the Clark W. Bryan Company, Springfield, Mass., 1879
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minister, preached the installation sermon – at a local home as Walpole's meeting house had yet to be built.
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In it the two sibling descendants attempted to portray their ancestor as a misunderstood and complicated man.
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Gravestone of Josiah Leavitt, grandfather of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, Hingham Cemetery, Hingham, Massachusetts
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The choice of the ministry probably came naturally to Jonathan Leavitt, whose great-great-grandfather
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A Sketch of the Life and Character of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, the first Minister of Charlemont, Mass.
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A Sketch of the Life and Character of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, the first Minister of Charlemont, Mass.
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By 1777 matters came to a head. Leavitt refused to accept his salary in rapidly depreciating
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was looking for a minister to pastor the town's first church, and Leavitt was selected.
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The family register of Rev. Jonathan Leavitt is in the collection of Memorial Hall,
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minister was his wife, Sarah (Hooker) Leavitt, great-granddaughter of Rev.
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death, in 1801, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt published a book entitled
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stations to shelter escaped slaves on their journeys north to
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currency. So the town voted to simply shut the church. A
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Departure from another church, later life and legacy
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Departure from Walpole and arrival in Massachusetts
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