Mary Greenleaf Leavitt ( Clement; September 22, 1830 – February 5, 1912) was an educator and successful orator who became the first round-the-world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Setting out on virtually non-stop worldwide tours over a decade, she "went to all continents save Antarctica," where she crusaded against alcohol and its evils including domestic violence; and advocated for women's suffrage and other equal rights such as higher education for women. In 1891 she became the honorary life president of the World's WCTU.
Early life Mary Greenleaf Clement was born on September 22, 1830, in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the daughter of Baptist minister Rev. Joshua Clement and his wife Eliza (Harvey) Clement. Her parents totally abstained from the use of alcohol and opposed slavery. Mary was the second of nine children; and, she was educated at Thetford Academy in Thetford, Vermont, and later at the Massachusetts State Normal School at West Newton, Massachusetts, where she graduated in 1851 as valedictorian. She then taught for a year in Dover, Massachusetts, for one year; then, she taught in the Quincy Grammar School of Boston, Massachusetts, for two years. For the next three years, she served as head assistant in the Boylston Grammar School.
Marriage and professional life as educator She married Thomas Hooker Leavitt, a Boston real estate broker from Vermont, on June 3, 1857. They had three daughters. Thomas Leavitt later moved to Nebraska; the couple divorced in 1878. Mary Leavitt established her own private school at 115 Warren Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, from 1867 to 1881. At one time, she had sixty-five students, two full-time teachers, two assistant pupils, and four specialists for French, German, Italian and drawing. Leavitt taught French, Latin and singing.
Leavitt's connection with the U.S. temperance movement Mary grew up in a religious household that was influenced by such temperance leaders such as Congregational minister Lyman Beecher. The temperance campaign that was led by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was born in Ohio and New York State in 1873 when local women, concerned about alcohol's influence on home life, met in churches for prayer and then protested at saloons. The women of Fredonia, New York, became famous as they visited local saloons to pray and sing with their leader Mrs. Esther McNeil; and, on December 22, 1873, they were the first to call themselves the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Two days later, following a lecture at the Hillsboro, Ohio Music Hall the night before, the Crusade was born when Mrs. Eliza Thompson, a judge's wife and the daughter of a former governor, gathered 70 women in prayer at the Presbyterian Church and marched to the local saloons. Singing hymns as they went, the women demanded the saloons cease selling alcohol. In an age when most women were barred from voting, and when courts rarely addressed domestic violence or human trafficking, the temperance crusade offered women the moral high ground. In addition to push for banning alcohol sales and the opium trade, WCTU missionaries under the leadership of Frances Willard advocated women's suffrage, actively campaigning for the right to vote as part of the "Home Protection" campaign. Under Willard's leadership, the WCTU grew in membership to become the nation's largest women's club.
Early on, the minister's daughter became interested in the emerging women's movement, and she was among the temperance movement's earliest activists. She met Frances Willard in 1877, who at that time was head of the WCTU Publications Department. Willard described her as "a notable New England type of calm, clear intellect, masterful will, true heart, and perfect self-control. Whenever she rose to speak, the bright-eye and handsome but pathetic face, enlisted our attention." Leavitt then organized the first WCTU chapter in Boston, serving as its president, from 1879 to 1880.
Working for the WCTU
In 1881 she left her school and began working full time for the WCTU to promote temperance and suffrage, serving as the National WCTU's first Superintendent of the Franchise Department in 1882. As Leavitt traveled through New England, she also represented the New England Women's Suffrage Association. Her daughter Edith sang at the opening of the Fourteenth convention of the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1882, and Leavitt gave a rousing speech on women's rights, temperance and how men's attitudes about women can change.
Her father died after a long illness in June 1883, and Willard tasked her with field work in the Mississippi Valley and the West Coast. In July 1883 Leavitt traveled to California, Oregon and Washington to organize WCTU chapters there. From 1883 to 1891, Leavitt was a secretary in the WCTU.
"Past middle age and granite-faced," writes Patricia Ward D'Itri in Crosscurrents in the International Women's Movement, "she had what biographers described as an unfortunate family resemblance to George Washington." Frances Willard recognized Leavitt's organizational abilities and popularity as a lecturer, by asking her new emissary to undertake a mission to the Far East to assess what the WCTU could do to organize international temperance efforts. Leavitt was designated the WCTU's "Superintendent of Reconnaissance for World's WCTU." The purpose of her first mission abroad, said the organization's newsletter tentatively, would be visiting Hawaii and the Far East "endeavoring to introduce the W.C.T.U. methods and to provide for a helpful interchange of sympathy."Cross Currents in the International Women's Movement, 1848–1948, p. 50
World missionary Leavitt's journey did not begin auspiciously; she left America with no financial backing from the national organization and only $35 in her pocket – from her own funds. "She has no capital save her faith", WCTU founder Frances Willard noted in the group's publication, The Union Signal. Willard told her followers: "Let me affectionately urge you to pray definitely for Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt and her embassy, the most distant echo of the great Ohio crusade, the farthest outreaching of the gospel temperance wave."
But the times were right for Leavitt's message. Temperance crusaders found willing listeners among women in places like New Zealand and Australia. In 1885 she championed the formation of the New Zealand Woman's Christian Temperance Union under the leadership of many suffragists who then became more organized nationally under the Franchise Superintendency of Kate Sheppard. 45,000 women in Victoria – almost a quarter of Australia's adult females – signed a petition to the government demanding that it introduce local legislation to protect the female sex from the "ill usage" said to sometimes accompany alcohol abuse.Much of the early temperance message concerned rape and sexual crimes influenced, crusaders felt, by alcohol consumption. But such blunt talk could not be addressed openly, and it was only hinted at. In a speech entitled "Temperance and Purity," for example, Mary Clement Leavitt spoke of her campaign to the 'National Purity Conference'. "'I never should have yielded to him but for the wine he persuaded me to take,' is the wail of thousands of young girls who had no wish to go astray", Leavitt told the delegates.M1
Polyglot Petition Frances Willard sent to her the Polyglot Petition in August 1885 to get signatures that would show world leaders of their people's willingness to take a stand against the alcohol traffic and opium trade. Willard started the petition process that ended up with nearly 7.5 million signatures. The text of the Polyglot Petition follows: To the Governments of the World (Collectively and Severally) We, your petitioners, although physically weak, are strong of heart to love our homes, our Native Land, and the World's Family of Nations. We know that when the brain of man is clear, his home is happy, his country prosperous, and the world grows friendly. But we know that Alcoholic Stimulants and Opium, which craze and cloud the brain, make misery for man and all the world, and most of all for us and all our children. We know these stimulants and opiates are sold under legal guarantees, which make the Governs partners in the traffic, by accepting as revenue a portion of its profits, and that they are forced by treaties upon populations either ignorant or unwilling. We have no power to prevent this great iniquity under which the whole world groans and staggers, but you have the power to clense the flags of every clime from the stain of your complicity with this unmingled curse. We therefore, come to you with the united voices of representative women from every civilized nation under the sun, beseeching you to strip away the safeguards and sanctions of the law from the Drink Traffic and the Opium Trade, and to protect our Home by the Total Prohibition of this two-fold curse of civilization throughout all the territory over which your Government extends.
The Polyglot Petition and signatures from people on six continents was pasted onto nearly 100 rolls of canvas. It is currently archived at the Frances Willard Historical House and Museum in Evanston, Illinois, US.
Hawaii On November 15, 1884, Leavitt sailed from San Francisco to Honolulu (Hawaiian Islands, then called the "Sandwich Islands") with $35 (approximately $1,100 value in 2024) in her purse. She had also brought with her a letter of introduction and recommendation from her own Congregational minister, Dr. Henry M. Dexter. She worked with Mrs. J.M. Whitney of Honolulu to find places to lecture in the Hawaiian Islands. She traveled to Hilo, Wiluku and Haiku, using interpreters to speak to indigenous Hawaiians, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese audiences, where she was well received. On November 22, 1884, in the upper hall of the YMCA building Leavitt with forty women she established the Honolulu WCTU. She was sent on with additional funds (around $400) from the Honolulu WCTU members.
New Zealand and Australia Leavitt boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.'s steamship S.S. Zealandia to travel from Honolulu to Australia with a stop at Auckland, New Zealand. She arrived on the Zealandia with 29 passengers in steerage January 14 without much fanfare – the New Zealand Herald does not include her in its list of arrivals. She begins lecturing in Auckland, the commercial and financial center for New Zealand, on January 27 sharing the stage with an already recognized and popular temperance missionary, Rev. R.T. Booth.
By February 4, 1885, Leavitt presided over the founding of the Auckland branch of the WCTU. Over the next seven months, she visited large and small cities on both islands: in the Auckland area, she visited Remuera, Parnell, Ponsonby, Newton, and Onehunga. She moved south to Thames, Cambridge, Wairoa, and Tauranga, TeAroha. She spent time in Wellington, the nation's capital, and The Hutt nearby. In Wellington, she met Anne Ward (suffragist) who took over and created the national organization, the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand, after Leavitt left New Zealand. Leavitt also visited the South Island: Dunedin (the largest city at the time), Port Chalmers, Ravensborne, Oamaru, Invercargill, Christchurch, Sydnenham, Papanui, Richmond. She returned to the North Island to visit Rangiora, Napier, Waipukeran, Waipawa.
By mid-August 1885, she had arrived in Sydney, Australia. There, Leavitt traveled from Sydney to MacDonaldstown, Newton, Lithgow, Bathurst, Rockhampton, Townsville, Charter's Towers, Mayborough, Ipswich, Toowoonsba, Melbourne, Queenscliff, and Adelaide. From February to March she also visited Tasmania, the island state of Australia, lecturing in Lancaster, Cressy, Beaconsfield, Hobart, Richmond, and Campbelltown before returning to Sydney.