John Wheeler Leavitt - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

My grandparents were both of Puritan New England stock, English entirely. Their ancestors had been early settlers in the northern and western part of Connecticut. My grandfather, John Wheeler Leavitt, came from the township of Washington; my grandmother, whose name was Cecilia Kent, from Suffield.

– American painter Cecilia Beaux, Background with Figures: Autobiography of Cecilia Beaux, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930

John Wheeler Leavitt (1790–1870) was a prominent New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

businessman, founder of J. W. & R. Leavitt Company, eventually declared insolvent, and grandfather of American society portrait painter Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux was an American society portraitist, in the manner of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France...

, who frequently painted members of the family. Leavitt ran the family-owned trading partnership, and was one of the most prominent businessmen of his age until financial reverses caused the bankruptcy of the firm. In spite of the financial reverses, Leavitt and his wife went on to help raise their granddaughter painter Beaux after her mother died shortly after she was born and her French father fled back to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

John Wheeler Leavitt was born July 3, 1790, at Washington, Connecticut

Washington, Connecticut

Washington is a rural town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, in the New England region of the United States. The population was 3,596 at the 2000 census. Washington is known for its picturesque countryside, historic architecture, and active civic and cultural life...

, the son of Samuel Leavitt and Lydia Wheeler Leavitt. John W. Leavitt's father Samuel came from a branch of a Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

family which had settled in Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

in the eighteenth century, and Samuel later served as representative to the Connecticut General Assembly

Connecticut General Assembly

The Connecticut General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is a bicameral body composed of the 151-member House of Representatives and the 36-member Senate. It meets in the state capital, Hartford. There are no term limits for either chamber.During...

from Washington. On August 22, 1820, Samuel's merchant son John Wheeler Leavitt married Cecilia Kent, who was from an old Suffield, Connecticut

Suffield, Connecticut

Suffield is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It had once been within the boundaries of Massachusetts. The town is located in the Connecticut River Valley with the town of Enfield neighboring to the east. In 1900, 3,521 people lived in Suffield; and in 1910, 3,841. As of the...

, family, with whom the Leavitts had extensively intermarried. (Today's Kent Memorial Library in Suffield is named for the family.)

John Wheeler Leavitt moved to New York City at a young age, where he entered into business with his brother Rufus in the firm they called "J. W. & R. Leavitt". Operating primarily as traders, sometimes with first cousin David Leavitt

David Leavitt (banker)

David Leavitt was an early New York City banker and financier. As president of the American Exchange Bank of New York during the Financial Panic of 1837 he represented bondholders of the nascent Illinois and Michigan Canal, allowing completion of the historic canal linking the Midwest with the...

, the pair bought and sold nearly everything, including real estate in Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

and Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

. Leavitt made an early splash, serving as one of the founders of the Mutual Life Insurance Company

Mutual Life Insurance Company

Mutual Life Insurance Company may refer to:* Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company* Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company* The Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company* Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co...

. As early as 1828, Leavitt was named a co-founder and initial sponsor of the Mercantile Library of New York City, which was co-founded by John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor , born Johann Jakob Astor, was a German-American business magnate and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States...

, Arthur Tappan

Arthur Tappan

Arthur Tappan was an American abolitionist. He was the brother of Senator Benjamin Tappan, and abolitionist Lewis Tappan.-Biography:...

, and a handful of other powerful early Manhattan businessmen. Leavitt also served as director of several early New York City banking firms, including Bank of America.

Leavitt also served as president of the New York City Board of Trade in 1841 In 1836, the prominent New York businessman served on the executive committee of the American Temperance Society

American Temperance Society

The American Temperance Society , also known as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was a society established on February 13, 1826 in Boston, MA. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking...

. Heavily involved in charitable work, Leavitt also served as a director of the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. He also served on the boards of the Prison Discipline Society, the American Education Society, the New York Hospital Society, the Central American Education Society, the New York Temperance Society and other charitable organizations, and as an elder of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church is a large congregation of the Presbyterian Church . The church was founded in 1808 as the Cedar Street Presbyterian Church and has been located on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street in midtown Manhattan since 1875. It has approximately 3,250 members from a variety...

on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. John Wheeler Leavitt also served with other prominent New York merchants and educators on the board of the New York Atheneum, an institution which eventually led to the founding of New York University, and was a founding trustee of the Clinton Hall Association. Leavitt and his brother Rufus also served as life members of the American Colonization Society

American Colonization Society

The American Colonization Society , founded in 1816, was the primary vehicle to support the "return" of free African Americans to what was considered greater freedom in Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 as a place for freedmen...

, an attempt by early American abolitionists to subsidize a colony in Africa where America could export its free black citizens.

In 1836 and 1837, Leavitt served as a Director of the New York and Erie Railroad. Among the host of other companies Leavitt was involved with were the Utah Central Railroad Leavitt had become a fixture on the Manhattan economic scene, and his presence on committees was noted by early New York mayor Philip Hone

Philip Hone

Philip Hone was Mayor of New York from 1826 to 1827. He was most notable for a detailed diary he kept from 1828 until the time of his death in 1851. His recorded diary is said to be the most extensive and detailed of his time in 19th century America.Son of a German immigrant carpenter, Hone became...

. (Leavitt had been one of Hone's earliest and most prominent supporters in his successful mayoral candidacy). In 1837 Leavitt was member of a committee devoted to receiving Senator Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests...

in New York City

New York City

following his resignation from the Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

.

Merchant Leavitt had reached the apogee of the Manhattan social whirl, with American furniture maker Duncan Phyfe

Duncan Phyfe

Duncan Phyfe was one of nineteenth-century America’s leading furniture makers.Born Duncan Fife near Loch Fannich, Scotland, he emigrated to Albany, New York, at age 16 and served as a cabinetmaker’s apprentice...

producing furniture for the successful businessman. By 1850 New York newspapers were heralding the upcoming marriage of the daughter of the prosperous Connecticut-born merchant to the scion of a French-family-owned silk-manufacturing firm. In that year John Wheeler Leavitt's daughter Cecilia Kent Leavitt was married to "Mr Adolph Beaux of the house of J. P. Beaux & Co., Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

" in a society wedding at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

But the following years brought disaster to the socially prominent families of both Leavitt and Beaux. In 1855 John W. Leavitt's daughter Cecilia died 12 days after giving birth to her daughter Cecilia Beaux, who was then sent with a sister to grandparents John Wheeler and Cecilia (Kent) Leavitt's New York home. By the time of Cecilia Beaux's mother's death, Leavitt and his wife were living in austere circumstances, following the collapse of his once-thriving business. The origins of the collapse of Leavitt's business interests are not recorded, but the aftermath was stunning. Countless suits were filed against John Wheeler Leavitt and his brother Rufus by creditors anxious to reclaim what was left of their funds. Some of the suits, recorded in The New-York Legal Observer, even hinted at fraud as the once-highflying partnership of the two Leavitt brothers collapsed.

On top of the business reversals of the Leavitt family firm, Jean Adolph Beaux's business interests collapsed in the years following the birth of his daughter. The French businessman returned to his native country, with only one visit back to Philadelphia in 16 years to see the family he left behind.

But in spite of the collapse of the family firm, grandparents John Wheeler and Cecilia Kent Leavitt took in the two children, and proved instrumental in raising them through the years. Cecilia Beaux later painted her Suffield-born grandmother several times, and called her crucial to her development as an artist.

"Especially attached to her grandmother Cecilia Kent Leavitt", writes art historian Tara Tappert in her Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture, "Beaux regarded her as 'the strongest and most beneficent influence' in her life." In the wake of the devastation that struck the family, it was Cecilia Kent Leavitt who provided an emotional bulwark for her grandchildren. Beaux recalled later that her grandmother stressed a pragmatic approach to life, in which "everything undertaken must be completed, conquered". The unsettled years during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

were particularly difficult, as Beaux's absent father provided little emotional or financial support, and her Leavitt grandparents had lost much of their wealth and prominence.

For many years, portraitist Beaux and her cousin Emma Leavitt shared a Philadelphia studio, a bond encouraged by Beaux's Leavitt grandmother. The shared studio was not the only Leavitt bond that eased Cecilia Beaux's passage as an artist: her aunt Eliza Leavitt was her first painting teacher, and Philadelphia history painter and cousin Catherine Drinker contributed to the young Beaux's education.

John Wheeler Leavitt is buried within Vault 39 of New York Marble Cemetery

New York Marble Cemetery

The New York Marble Cemetery is an historic cemetery founded in 1830, and located in the interior of the block bounded by East Second and 3rd Streets, Second Avenue, and The Bowery, in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is entered through an alleyway with an iron gate at...

, a resting place he purchased in 1830, when times were good. The cemetery, built on the northern edge of Manhattan's development, was a favored resting place for New York's leading professional and merchant families. Leavitt died in New York City on July 17, 1870. His wife Cecilia, who proved so crucial in the development of her artist granddaughter, died on May 9, 1892.

John Wheeler Leavitt and his wife had eight children, five of them girls. Leavitt was the great-grandfather of Haverford College

Haverford College

Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...

Professor Henry S. Drinker

Drinker House

The Henry S. Drinker House was constructed in 1902 on the campus of Haverford College. Located just beyond Founder's Green, the house is situated directly next to Haverford's soccer pitch and across Walton Road from Gummere, which houses freshmen. Drinker was originally built for Haverford...

. John Wheeler Leavitt's youngest daughter Emily Austin Leavitt had married William Foster Biddle

Biddle family

The American Biddle family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania yielded numerous and diverse people of interest down to the present era.William Biddle and Sarah Kempe were Quakers who emigrated from England to America in 1681 in part to avoid religious persecution...

, a Philadelphia civil and mining engineer who proved adept at looking after his nieces. Leavitt's son John Wheeler Leavitt Jr. graduated from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

in New York City

New York City

in 1845. John Wheeler Leavitt Jr. was christened at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1831. He later married Catherine Churchill, daughter of New York businessman William Churchill and his wife Cornelia. Catherine (Churchill) Leavitt is interred in the Leavitt family vault in New York Marble Cemetery.

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See also