Old Center Cemetery Story: Elizabeth Leavitt

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Photo by Sarah Donahue
Elizabeth King Leavitt

The second Old Center Cemetery Tour sponsored by the Suffield Historical Society introduced tour participants to a different group of people buried in the cemetery. We met and learned about three early ministers: John Younglove, Benjamin Ruggles and Ebenezer Devotion.Elizabeth King Leavitt told about herself and her husband Thaddeus who liked to be called the Squire. Ellen Mead Doyle and her daughter Jane Doyle Allen spoke of their lives and Jesse Fowler Smith was the last speaker of the tour.

Sarah Donahue who has been cleaning the gravestones in the cemetery with help from DAR members, gave a demonstration on how to properly clean a gravestone.

An introduction from the tour: My name is Elizabeth King Leavitt. I am buried here with my husband, Thaddeus Senior. In 2024, Thaddeus and I gained some notoriety in Suffield because our portraits painted by Charles Lyman in 1803 were bought by the Suffield Historical Society and are now hanging in the Alexander King House. I would have liked it better if our portraits were hanging in our own house at 331 North Main Street, but I understand that the house is privately owned. That house was built for Thaddeus and me when we were newly-weds in 1773. Thaddeus was 23. I was 22.

Usually, my husband and son, both named Thaddeus, are the ones people talk about. Both were leading citizens of the town and very successful, wealthy merchants. Squire Leavitt, as my husband liked to be called, was a Selectman and Justice of the Peace. He owned ships which traveled throughout the Atlantic Ocean, stopping in Spain and the West Indies. He made so much money with his importing and exporting business that he invested with Mr. Oliver Phelps and a handful of other men who formed the Connecticut Land Company. Together they purchased vast amounts of land in the wild, western hinterlands of Ohio and New York to sell to settlers. What a mistake that was! Mr. Phelps, who owned the most acreage in the Western Reserve, as it was called, became bankrupt because he couldn’t sell the land. I could have told him it was a foolish endeavor, but nobody asked me. Mr. Phelps left his magnificent house and moved away. Thankfully, we Leavitts survived.

I grew up in Suffield, as did the Squire. My father is William King; my mother is Lucy Hatheway. I grew up with my eight siblings in a house still standing on North Street, which not too many years ago was an establishment called a Bed and Breakfast. For many years a statue of a Revolutionary War soldier was posted outside the house. That’s quite appropriate since my father was an Ensign in charge of a militia training band.

Thaddeus was often not home. He had so many interests besides his business. He was part of a group which built a toll bridge over the Connecticut River between Springfield and West Springfield. The bridge was not entirely successful. It heaved up and down, enough to make one sick and then was damaged in 1814 by spring floods. Ultimately, it was demolished. In a more successful venture, Thaddeus became a director of the newly formed Hartford Bank, one of the first banks in Connecticut. He also served on the Hartford County Agricultural Society and helped to settle the border dispute between Connecticut and Massachusetts. Do you know that until 1749, just two years before I was born, Suffield was part of Massachusetts? Then it became part of Connecticut. But the border between the two states was not settled until 1804 when a compromise was reached. Massachusetts was given the “Southwick Jog” causing that unsightly jag in the border.

I had more than enough to do at home than to worry about the Squire’s frequent absences. I ran the household and raised our children, Thaddeus Jr. and Elizabeth (I guess she was a junior of sorts too.) But because we were wealthy, I had leisure time to spend on my passion, my needlework. One of my works survives to this day and is at the Alexander King House. I called it “A View of Cronberg Castle near Elsineur”. It depicts the castle from the great William Shakespeare’s play called Hamlet.

I like to think that my artistic talent passed down to my famous great grandsons: artist William Morris Hunt, photographer Leavitt Hunt, and the architect Richard Morris Hunt, who designed The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. I wish I could have met those youngsters. What a talk we would have had! Unfortunately, I died in 1826 at age 74, before they were born. The Squire died in 1813 when he was 62.

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