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.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him can fright my faith.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:25.26.
Jesus.