Early Life and Career
William Homer Leavitt was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, to Aaron Littlefield Leavitt and his wife Sarah (Clark) Leavitt. The family subsequently removed in 1880 to Newport, Rhode Island, where William Homer Leavitt, having studied art in Paris, returned and set himself up as a society portrait painter. He was much in demand, and among the many well-known figures he painted was United States General Joseph Wheeler, who after the portrait session lent Leavitt his black horse, Alabama. The horse bucked and threw Leavitt onto Newport's Bellevue Avenue. Initially Leavitt was not expected to recover, although he did later make a full recovery.
Two years later Leavitt's career had taken off, causing The New York Times to note that "artist Leavitt has won distinction in his work and has a host of friends in intellectual circles." That same year, 1903, Leavitt went west to Lincoln, Nebraska, to paint the portrait of attorney and Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The portrait sessions were repeatedly interrupted by demands on Bryan, and the 32-year-old artist and the politician's 18-year-old daughter Ruth Bryan struck up a friendship. On September 17, 1903, the couple announced their plans to marry the next month, meaning the politician's daughter would leave her freshly started career at the University of Nebraska. In announcing the marriage, The New York Times noted that "Preparations Under Way to Make It an Elaborate Society Event."
But the big society wedding never transpired. Senator Bryan opposed the match, because of the difference in ages of the couple, as well as the fact that his daughter Ruth had just begun college. The couple married, in a small civil ceremony – described by the newspapers as 'informal' – attended by Bryan's parents, the members of Miss Bryan's college sorority and the widow of the college president and minister who had married William Jennings Bryan and his wife. William Leavitt's mother traveled to Nebraska from Rhode Island for the wedding, which was held in the Bryan home at Lincoln. "In accordance with Miss Bryan's wishes and those of her parents," noted The Oswego Daily Times, "the wedding appointments will be void of any attempt at elaboration."
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