Life
Elisha Leavitt was born at Hingham on March 1, 1714, the son of Elisha Leavitt Sr. and the former Sarah Lane, daughter of Ebenezer Lane. He was married to the former Ruth Marsh, daughter of Thomas and Mary (Burr) Marsh, with whom he had four children.
Elisha Leavitt was a successful businessman and landowner in Hingham. In 1771 Leavitt purchased one of Hingham's landmarks, the old Thaxter Mansion built in 1652, which had tapestried walls, elaborate painted murals, decorated door panels and large tiled fireplaces.
When Leavitt bought the home, it had been occupied by five generations of the Thaxter family, including Samuel Thaxter. (After Thaxter's death, his widow remarried Rev. John Hancock of Braintree, and was the mother of the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.) The last Thaxter owner, Col. Samuel Thaxter, moved to Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1771 and sold the house to Elisha Leavitt.
By the time Leavitt bought the Thaxter Mansion, he was a confirmed Tory, and he used a blind passage in the house, accessed by a secret door, to hide Tories from nearby Marshfield when the local Committee of Safety conducted a search for them. The Tories were later successfully smuggled by water to Boston.
Leavitt was an unlikely Loyalist. He began his career as a simple blacksmith, was named constable of Hingham, then launched himself on a career as a trader and entrepreneur, becoming a shareholder in the fishing company and engaging in navigation as a shipowner.
Eventually Leavitt became one of the largest landowners in the region; among his holdings were several islands in Boston Harbor, including 62-acre (250,000 m2) Lovells Island, purchased by Leavitt from the town of Charlestown in 1767, 50-acre (200,000 m2) Grape Island, half of 23-acre (93,000 m2) Gallops Island, and 39-acre (160,000 m2) Georges Island. The islands were largely used for pasturage for cattle and horses and for raising hay. Leavitt had purchased Georges Island from Hannah Greenleaf in April 1765. Elisha Leavitt also owned land across the region, including substantial acreage at Cohasset, the seaside town carved from Hingham.
Read more about this topic: Elisha Leavitt
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all.... I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“What a vast fraternity it is,—that of ‘Hearts that Ache.’ For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)