Jonathan Leavitt (publisher) - History

History

Jonathan Leavitt was born in 1797 at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire likely to Simeon Leavitt and his wife Betty (née) Tuck. An obituary in The Publishers' Weekly for Jonathan Leavitt's son George Ayers Leavitt, who followed his father into the publishing industry, indicates a family association with Effingham Falls (now simply Effingham), New Hampshire. The New Hampshire town had once been named Leavitts Town, and was settled chiefly by members of the Leavitt family from Hampton, New Hampshire. Leavitt served as an apprentice bookbinder in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then moved to Andover, Massachusetts in 1812–13. In Andover, Leavitt and printers Abraham Gould and Timothy Flagg set up a press for the Andover Theological Seminary. Leavitt and his two partners continued to operate their printing and bookbinding operation after Leavitt decided to relocate after over a decade in Andover.

Leavitt married the former Joan Ayres at Haverhill, Massachusetts, on July 8, 1820 at the age of 23. Although most accounts give the name of Leavitt's wife as Joan Ayres – and Ayres was subsequently the middle name of Leavitt's son George, who took over his father's publishing business – Sidney Perley, in his authoritative The Essex Antiquarian, lists under the 'Adams Genealogy' the information that Major John Adams of Andover, Massachusetts, had daughters Louisa (who married 'Jonathan Leavitt') and Hannah (who married "Daniel Appleton of Haverhill' of "the Appleton Publishing House of New York City.").