William Homer Leavitt - Fate of The Children and Later Life

Fate of The Children and Later Life

Ruth Bryan Owen lived abroad for several years during her English husband's postings, until she returned to America, where she ran for Congress from Florida after his early death. She was the first Congresswoman elected from Florida, served as the first woman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and later served as the nation's first female Ambassador. While the United States Ambassador to Denmark, a post to which she was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ruth Baird Bryan Leavitt Owen married Danish citizen Capt. Boerge Rohde, Captain of the Royal Life Guards of King Christian X of Denmark, to whose court Ruth Bryan Owen was ambassador. She died in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1954.

William Homer Leavitt's son John Bryan Leavitt later dropped the name Leavitt. He became an actor known simply as John Bryan, and he died under somewhat suspicious circumstances in New York City on January 2, 1943, with the death eventually being ruled a suicide. His sister Ruth, daughter of painter Leavitt, married investment banker Robert Lehman, head of the family investment banking firm Lehman Brothers.

Painter William Homer Leavitt eventually returned to America from Paris, and married as his second wife Gertrude (Leeper) Leavitt, daughter of the Rev. Dr. G. Leeper of Cleveland, Ohio. Leavitt lived at his old home in Newport with his wife, who died of appendicitis on April 15, 1914. Leavitt continued to paint and in February 1927 delivered a lecture at the Boston Public Library on The Personal Influence of John Ruskin. Leavitt's death from heart disease was reported in "Deaths Registered in the Town of Winthrop, 1946–1951, pg. 32 as August 8, 1951 in Winthrop, Mass. He was buried in Island Cemetery, Newport, Rhode Island, according to the same document.