Josiah Leavitt - Early Life

Early Life

Josiah Leavitt was born October 21, 1744, in Hingham, Massachusetts, the son of Hezekiah and Grace (Hatch) Leavitt. Hezekiah Leavitt was a prosperous Hingham merchant who owned one of the town's largest warehouses on the harbor, a large wharf and a share of the town's gristmill and fisheries business. Josiah Leavitt's father was a close friend and business associate of Rev. Ebenezer Gay, third minister of Old Ship Church, Hingham's Meetinghouse.

Following his education at Harvard College, Dr. Josiah Leavitt became a practicing physician at Hingham. On the side, the mechanically-inclined Leavitt tinkered with inventions and mechanical movements. One of the first products of Leavitt's sideline was a large clock, manufactured in 1772–73, which was subsequently hung in a dormer window on the southwesterly slope of the roof of Old Ship Church, so that the clock's dial could be seen by townspeople. Leavitt's clock, the first built in Hingham, was probably the only clock he ever built. Where Dr. Leavitt garnered his expertise is unknown, although contemporaries noted his mechanical aptitude, as well as the fact that his sister Hannah was married to Hingham watchmaker Joseph Lovis.

In 1774, Dr. Leavitt built a large Colonial clapboard home at 93 Main Street, two blocks from the Meetinghouse. But shortly afterwards, Leavitt moved to Sterling, Massachusetts, where he built another Colonial home, and then a few years later to Boston, where he gave up his medical practice, embraced his affinity for music and mechanics and began manufacturing organs.