John Leavitt (Ohio settler)

John Leavitt's brother Thaddeus,[b] a prominent Suffield merchant, was among the eight original purchasers of the Western Reserve from the state of Connecticut in 1796.

[4] Other extended family members were also involved in purchase of Western Reserve lands including Oliver Ellsworth, whose son Henry Leavitt Ellsworth later traveled to the Reserve to oversee family land grants, staying at the inn belonging to his cousin John Leavitt.

(John Leavitt was also one of the original proprietors of Aurora, Ohio, with members of the King, Phelps, and Granger families of Suffield.

On his arrival in the Western Reserve, Leavitt discovered that the prospective town of Warren was better situated than Leavittsburg, having more open bottom land and better mill sites.

The couple had eight children, many of whom later moved to Ohio: William, John Jr, Cynthia, Sally, Henry Fitch, Abdiah, Humphrey Howe and Albert.

In one early account, written when Warren consisted of 16 settlers, an observer mentions a hunt which netted 486 rattlers.

The hunt he witnessed, in which cudgel-wielding settlers chased the snakes off their rock ledges and into their dens, was deemed a success, with the "slain collected into heaps... a good portion of which were larger than a man's leg below the calf, and over five feet in length.

John Leavitt's first public house and tavern became the nucleus of Warren's growing community, serving as temporary headquarters for the region's first military officials.

Leavittsburg, the town named for the early Ohio family, had a gristmill for many years, but largely escaped development.