Dudley Leavitt (minister)
Encyclopedia
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, educated at Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
, who led a splinter group from the First Church in Salem, Massachusetts
Salem, Massachusetts
Salem is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,407 at the 2000 census. It and Lawrence are the county seats of Essex County...
, during a wave of religious ferment nearly a decade before the Great Awakening
First Great Awakening
The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
. Following Leavitt's death at age 42, his congregation elected to christen itself 'The Church of Which the Rev. Dudley Leavitt was late Pastor' after the charismatic preacher. Leavitt Street in Salem is named for the early minister.
Leavitt was born in Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The town's population was 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood...
, in 1720 to a family with Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
. Leavitt's parents were Moses Leavitt Jr. of Exeter and his wife Sarah (née Leavitt) Leavitt. Educated at Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
, where he graduated at age 19 in 1739, Dudley Leavitt was first ordained pastor of Exeter's church in 1743, where he served for two years. On October 23, 1745, he was ordained second minister of a splinter church of First Church in Salem. (The congregation had followed Rev. Samuel Fisk from the church a decade prior to Leavitt's arrival, and although informally known as the Third Church, the congregation continued to insist on calling itself the First Church.)
On September 21, 1751, the young minister married Mary Pickering of Salem, born at Salem's Pickering House
Pickering House
The Pickering House is a Colonial located on Broad Street, Salem in the Chestnut Street District. The house, owned and occupied by ten successive generations of the Pickering family including Colonel Timothy Pickering. This house is believed to be the oldest house in the United States...
, the daughter of Deacon Timothy Pickering and sister of Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
patriot Timothy Pickering
Timothy Pickering
Timothy Pickering was a politician from Massachusetts who served in a variety of roles, most notably as the third United States Secretary of State, serving in that office from 1795 to 1800 under Presidents George Washington and John Adams.-Early years:Pickering was born in Salem, Massachusetts to...
. Three years after his marriage Dudley Leavitt's uncle Moses Leavitt died at Stratham, New Hampshire
Stratham, New Hampshire
Stratham is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 7,255 at the 2010 census. It is bounded on the west by the Squamscott River. The town is the home of the only U.S. Lindt & Sprüngli factory and the headquarters of the Timberland Corporation.-History:Stratham...
, and named the novice preacher in his will. A year later, in 1749, Leavitt's brother Stephen died at Exeter, leaving Dudley most of his Stratham lands.
Rev. Leavitt was caught up in the wave of religious ferment which swept New England, taking the helm of the splinter group founded by Rev. Fisk, later known as the Third Church of Salem. "Our predecessors who built the former house", recounts the church history, "were thus compelled by a power, equal to that of the bayonet, to leave the place which they greatly loved, and to which they deeply, if not justly, felt that they had all the rights of a majority to retain." Leavitt was part of the New Light evangelical movement that swept New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. Within the esteemed First Church, the movement by the evangelicals had shaken the Church to its foundations and prompted the exodus of the congregation Leavitt later led.
In a letter from 'a gentleman in Salem' to a Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
friend in October 1745, the anonymous author recounted the subsequent dismissal of Fisk by his congregation, and his replacement by the young Leavitt. The letter was printed as a supplement to the newspaper The Boston Evening-Post
Boston Evening-Post
The Boston Evening-Post was a newspaper printed in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 18th century. Publishers included Thomas Fleet , Thomas Fleet Jr. , and John Fleet .-Further reading:...
on November 18, 1745, when printer Thomas Fleet openly identified himself as the printer of the anonymous letter. Meriting a supplement to the daily newspaper of the state's capital, the episode epitomized the religious debates still raging in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts over a century after its founding as a Puritan refuge.
"Mr. Leavitt was ordained at Salem about this time with vast disturbance", noted a contemporary ministerial observer. The observer attributed the disturbance to the fact that the schismatic congregation, still claiming to be the First Church of Salem, had axed the very man who led it out in protest.
The Third Church of Salem had been born of dissent: it split off from the First Church in 1735 under the leadership of Rev. Samuel Fisk, who had been let go by the First Church. Following Fisk's dismissal by his new congregation in 1745, the pastorate of Third Church was assumed by Leavitt. Dudley Leavitt's assumption of his minister's post in place of Samuel Fisk preceded the Great Awakening
First Great Awakening
The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
by a decade. The autocratic Fisk had broken off from his church in 1735, then a decade later he himself was deposed when church elders rebelled against ministerial authority and picked Leavitt as their candidate of change. Apparently in the decade of Fisk's control, his stern discipline in church matters alienated some of his supporters. After Leavitt's ordination, some of those who had voted a decade earlier to separate from First Church with Fisk instead elected to return to worship with their former enemies. Such were the ways of New England theocracy.
Seeking reconciliation with other church members after Leavitt's ordination, the Third Church appealed to ecclesiastical authorities in Boston for reconciliation after Fisk's dismissal. In 1748, a letter was penned by Leavitt's congregation repenting the "misconduct of their Brethren from whom we had withdrawn communion", according to ecclesiastical authorities in Boston. The letter from Rev. Leavitt's church "acknowledging their offense, and asking Forgiveness and reconciliation" was meant to assuage those who were put off by Fisk's ministerial authoritarianism.
The congregation's actions to atone for the offense they had apparently given under Fisk were applauded by church authorities in Massachusetts, who voted to resume contact with the Salem congregation. The confession was "so far satisfactory that the churches of the excommunicating council rescinded the actions of that council, one after another voting to resume the relations of fellowship."
By the time of the Great Awakening
First Great Awakening
The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
, almost a decade later, Rev. Leavitt was seen as a 'New Light', and Rev. Fisk, who had himself been a call for change, as an 'Old Light'.
Dudley Leavitt's congregation continued to cling to the name of First Church of Salem until 1763, a year after Leavitt's death, when the congregation finally assumed the name of Third Church of Christ in Salem. In a list of deceased ministers of 1764, Dudley Leavitt was still listed as minister of the First Church of Salem, even though the First Church refused to acknowledge that it had lost part of its congregation.
Joseph Badger
Joseph Badger was a portrait artist in Boston, Massachusetts in the 18th-century. He painted some 80 portraits of merchants, businessmen, clergy, and other notables, and their wives and children.-Biography:...
was later shown in an exhibition at the Plummer Hall exhibition in Salem in December, 1875. At the time, the portrait was owned by Salem merchant John Pickering, Esq. Dudley Leavitt and his wife Mary (Pickering) Leavitt had three daughters: Sarah, who married Salem merchant Isaac White, and subsequently Jonathan Payson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the largest city but only the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 21,233 at the 2010 census...
; Mary Leavitt who married Dr. Joseph Orne of Salem, a Harvard College graduate; and Elizabeth Leavitt, who married the merchant William Pickman of Salem. The prominent Salem merchant Dudley Leavitt Pickman
Dudley Leavitt Pickman
Dudley Leavitt Pickman was a Salem, Massachusetts, merchant who built one of the great Salem trading firms during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pickman was a partner in the firm Devereux, Pickman & Silsbee and a state senator...
was the son of William and Elizabeth (Leavitt) Pickman.
Further reading
- The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Perry MillerPerry MillerPerry G. Miller was an American intellectual historian and Harvard University professor. He was an authority on American Puritanism, and a founder of the field of American Studies. Alfred Kazin referred to him as "the master of American intellectual history"...
, Belknap Press, 1983 - Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, David Hackett FischerDavid Hackett FischerDavid Hackett Fischer is University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University. Fischer's major works have tackled everything from large macroeconomic and cultural trends to narrative histories of significant events to explorations of...
, Oxford University Press, 1989
See also
- Moses LeavittMoses LeavittMoses Leavitt was an early settler of Exeter, New Hampshire, where he worked as a surveyor. Later he became a large landowner, and served as selectman, and as a Deputy and later Moderator of the New Hampshire General Court from Exeter...
- Samuel LeavittSamuel LeavittLieut. Samuel Leavitt was an early colonial settler of Exeter, New Hampshire, one of the four original towns in the colony of New Hampshire, where Leavitt later served as a delegate to the General Court as well as Lieutenant in the New Hampshire Militia, and subsequently as member of the New...
- Thomas DudleyThomas DudleyThomas Dudley was a colonial magistrate who served several terms as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dudley was the chief founder of Newtowne, later Cambridge, Massachusetts, and built the town's first home...
- Dudley Leavitt PickmanDudley Leavitt PickmanDudley Leavitt Pickman was a Salem, Massachusetts, merchant who built one of the great Salem trading firms during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pickman was a partner in the firm Devereux, Pickman & Silsbee and a state senator...
- Timothy PickeringTimothy PickeringTimothy Pickering was a politician from Massachusetts who served in a variety of roles, most notably as the third United States Secretary of State, serving in that office from 1795 to 1800 under Presidents George Washington and John Adams.-Early years:Pickering was born in Salem, Massachusetts to...