Early Years
Ashley Leavitt's father was Burke Fay Leavitt. In 1868, Leavitt's father Burke was living in Melrose Highlands, Massachusetts and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, an academic honor society. Burke subsequently became a minister for the United Church of Christ, and served as pastor of the denominations' first church in Maine at Williston in suburban Portland, Maine from 1872 to 1876.
Ashley Day Leavitt was born October 10, 1877, in Chicago, Illinois to Burke Fay and Lena (Day) Leavitt. Leavitt's name "Ashley" was taken from that of the maiden name of the wife of his ancestor Dr. Roswell Leavitt, a Massachusetts native and longtime physician in Cornish, New Hampshire who married Dorothy Ashley, a native of Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1798 in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Leavitt's father went on to be pastor at the Town Church of Manchester, New Hampshire in 1893. From at least 1900 to 1909, his father was a minister of Melrose Highlands Congregational Church in Melrose, Massachusetts, and later took up a pastor's post in Lincoln Park in suburban Chicago.
Leavitt himself was educated at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then at Yale College. In 1900, Leavitt was a member of Skull and Bones, an elite secret society based at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. He also was on the Yale debating team. From Yale, Leavitt attended Hartford Theological Seminary.
Leavitt's first ministerial job was as assistant pastor of South Church in Hartford, Connecticut, then subsequently at Congregational churches in Willimantic, Connecticut, Concord, New Hampshire and at Portland, Maine. In June 1903, Leavitt gave a speech at the Yale alumni meeting and Medical School anniversary exercise. On September 7, 1904, Leavitt married Myrtle Rose Hart of Barkhamsted, Connecticut. They had two children: Hart Day Leavitt, a longtime professor of English at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; and Julia Leavitt, born at Cumberland, Maine, in 1915. While at Portland, Maine, Leavitt was honored with giving the 1905 undergraduate commencement speech at the University of Connecticut, where he spoke on "The Individual, Law and Liberty."
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