Dudley Leavitt (publisher) - Youth and Early Career

Youth and Early Career

Dudley Leavitt was born at Exeter, the oldest child of farmer and landowner Joshua Leavitt and Elizabeth (née James). He was named after Governor Thomas Dudley, the second colonial governor of Massachusetts, from whom both parents descended. The descendant of early Exeter settlers, his father Joshua moved from Exeter to Deerfield early in Dudley Leavitt's life. After attending Exeter Academy, where he graduated in 1790, Leavitt married Judith Glidden of Gilmanton in 1794, and he and his new wife took up residence in the town, where he had family. In Gilmanton, Leavitt began studying Latin and Greek under Rev. Isaac Smith. In 1802 Leavitt also served as a selectman for the town.

Leavitt's first love was mathematics and astronomy. Something of a pure scientist, Leavitt contributed scientific papers to societies until the end of his life, often having to do with astronomy and physics. The annual conventions of the American Philosophical Society often heard presentations of the latest of Leavitt's findings. Nor were Leavitt's the musings of some crackpot New Hampshire hermit. In an 1811 paper concerning astronomy addressed to the President and membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for instance, Leavitt outlined his New and short Method of calculating the times of the First and Last Quarters of the Moon.

But with his scholarly inquiries and meager publishing income, Leavitt turned to teaching to supplement his income. In 1800 he founded the Gilmanton Gazette, a local weekly newspaper in Gilmanton, as well as the Farmer's Weekly Magazine for two years with a partner in the newly-established publishing house of "Leavitt & Clough." Leavitt's foray into newspaper publishing was an apparent failure, but he was pioneer of the industry in the state. The presses used to print his early broadsheet were purchased by the proprietors of the new Concord Gazette in 1806, who paid to have the presses lugged from Gilmanton to Concord on a two-horse wagon so they could begin printing one of the capital's earliest newspapers, and the only competitor of The New Hampshire Patriot.

Discouraged with the economics of newspaper publishing, Leavitt and his wife decided to move to Meredith in 1819. Pursuing another avenue of work, Leavitt ran an advertisement in the Concord Observer newspaper announcing that he was opening the "Meredith Academick School". The new school, its headmaster announced, would "offer instruction in the various grades usually taught in academies.... No pains will be spared on the part of the instructor to render the acquisition of useful knowledge easy and pleasant to those young gentlemen and ladies who may attend the School."

The "reasonable" board would cost $3.00 for each quarter's enrolment, Leavitt announced in his initial advertisement, and would cover most fields of study, except "Algebra, Navigation, Gunnery, or the Science of Projectiles, &c., Spherick Geometry & Trigonometry, Astronomy & Philosophy." For study in those more complicated fields Leavitt proposed to charge an additional 50 cents tuition for each quarter of enrolment. Around Meredith the new schoolmaster became known as "Old Master Leavitt".

Leavitt settled on his Meredith farm near Center Harbor, less than a mile from Lake Winnipesaukee, where he held his classes. He was known as a stern taskmaster who did not suffer fools, or wisecracking students. But Leavitt had enough of a sense of whimsy that he handpainted panels of "Award of Merit" to those students he felt met his stringent guidelines. (Leavitt never gave up teaching, even when busying himself with his almanac and other projects. He taught school into his 70s, and it was customary in New Hampshire for successful men to boast that they had been educated by Leavitt.)

When not teaching, he was to be found farming his 50 acres (200,000 m2) or immersed in study. Stories were legion of Leavitt so immersed in reading or study that he was oblivious to nearly everything around him. And the scholar Leavitt was no gentleman farmer. Aside from having edited a newspaper devoted to agriculture, Leavitt raised cattle on his small farm and toiled long hours when not teaching or writing.

Out of the confluence of Leavitt's scholarly interests, his former career as a newspaper writer and publisher, and his work as an author of textbooks was born the idea behind his farmer's almanac, which he first began publishing while living in Gilmanton. From the beginning, Leavitt demonstrated an unrelenting common sense, as well as a sly sense of humor. In an early edition of his almanacs, for instance, Leavitt included an illustration of a New Hampshireman struggling against the elements. Quoting a supposed poem of the 17th century, Leavitt wrote, in lines summoning feelings familiar to current Granite State residents, "Our mountains and hills and our vallies (sic) below; Being commonly cover'd with ice and with snow; And when the north-west wind with violence blows, Then every man pulls his cap over his nose; But if any's so hardy, and will it withstand, He forfeits a finger, a foot or a hand."

Leavitt continued to publish the eponymous almanac after he moved to Meredith. He had already founded a newspaper in 1811, while still living in Gilmanton, which he called The New Hampshire Register, which he continued publishing for several years (1811–17). The Register became well-known thanks to Leavitt's habit of printing brief synopses of historical events. On the side, between farming, teaching school, publishing his newspaper, Leavitt wrote and published at least eight textbooks on mathematics, grammar, astronomy, geography and music, including an edition of Nicolas Pike's widely distributed A New and Complete System of Arithmetic in 1826, as well as the staple textbooks of teachers across the nation The Scholar's Review and Teacher's Daily Assistant. The scores of textbooks produced by Leavitt, a dizzying array of titles down the years, including Complete Directions for Parsing the English Language; Or, The Rules of Grammar Made Easy: Being a New Grammatical Essay, Designed as a Supplement to Lindley Murray's Grammar, for the Use of Students as Soon as They Begin to Parse, make one wonder where Leavitt found the time.