Jonathan Leavitt (minister)

Jonathan Leavitt (1731–1802) was an early New England Congregational minister, born in Connecticut, and subsequently the pastor of churches in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, both of which dismissed him from his posts.

Leavitt's descendants became among the most noted abolitionists of their day, even though he himself was dismissed from one pastorate for allegedly abusing his runaway slave, and from another for his Loyalist sentiments.

Freegrace Leavitt,[6] a fellow Congregationalist minister, preached the installation sermon – at a local home as Walpole's meeting house had yet to be built.

Leavitt wore a large, full-powdered wig, "and when he entered the meeting-house, the whole congregation rose to do obeisance to the man in black, who, in his turn, always responded with a full bow."

[10] Mrs. Leavitt was gotten up in "full suit of brocade lutestring, without any bonnet, holding a fan to shade the sun from her face, as was the fashion 'down country.

[12] "It is handed down that, having dragged home a negro slave, a woman, who had run away, by a rope attached to his saddle", according to a history of Walpole, "[prominent local citizen] Colonel Bellows declared that such cruelty should not be submitted to; that he had settled Parson Leavitt, and now he would unsettle him.

"[11] On May 17, 1764, on the eve of a town meeting called to discuss Leavitt's tenure – and his act of cruelty towards his slave [13] – the minister suddenly accepted a payment from the townsmen for services rendered and agreed to depart.

After arriving with his family to an auspicious beginning, Leavitt's Loyalist sentiments began to rub his congregants the wrong way.

Leavitt's sermons "are not fresh and beautiful by the imagination, not ardent and overflowing with love, but didactic, dry, and clean, and very long.

His services were delivered in a dull monotony, and his prayers were incredibly long, in public and in family devotions.

"[14] Aside from matters of dress, comportment and diction, Leavitt possessed another trait which apparently sealed his fate: he was enamored with English colonial rule – a delicate subject anywhere in the American colonies, but especially among the hardscrabble rural settlers attempting to scratch a living from the Berkshire hill country.

[15] Whether because his congregants were hard-pressed, or because they objected to Leavitt's sympathies with mother England,[16] they held back his pay.

One rumor, never proved, was that the Reverend personally confiscated the only cows belonging to two of his poorer parishioners to pay his back salary.

[24] The daughter was Clarissa, who died unmarried; his sons were Jonathan, Hart, Joshua, David, Roger, Erastus, Roswell, Thomas, Samuel, Horatio, and Hooker.

Written by the banker's brother William Hooker Leavitt, a Minneapolis businessman, the slim volume was titled A Sketch of the Life and Character of Rev.