Josiah Leavitt (October 21, 1744 – February 26, 1804) was an early Massachusetts physician and inventor. Possessed of an early love for mechanical movements and for music, Leavitt eventually gave up his medical practice and moved to Boston, where he became one of the earliest manufacturers of pipe organs in the United States.
Early life
Josiah Leavitt was born October 21, 1744, in Hingham, in what was then the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was the son of Hezekiah Leavitt (1697–1768), and his second wife Grace (; 1699–1750). Hezekiah was a prosperous Hingham merchant who owned one of the town's largest warehouses on the harbor, a large wharf and a share of the town's gristmill and fisheries business.Josiah Leavitt's mother Grace Hatch was the second wife of Hezekiah Leavitt, whose brother Caleb Leavitt was married to Mary Hatch, Hannah's sister. Hezekiah Leavitt was a farmer and trader and one of Hingham's wealthiest citizens. In 1753 he built a warehouse near the town's shipyard for the convenience of his lumber, shipping and fishing businesses. He was styled 'Gentleman' in his will of 1768. Hezekiah Leavitt lived on Hingham's Leavitt Street.Google Books Search Josiah Leavitt's father was a close friend and business associate of Rev. Ebenezer Gay, third minister of Old Ship Church, Hingham's Meetinghouse.Rev. Ebenezer Gay served as minister of Old Ship Church for 69 years. He was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree by Harvard College in 1785. The Gay family were Tories, however, and were forced to flee Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War.Google Books SearchThe Benevolent Deity, Robert John Wilson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984
Josiah's ancestry was English, with traces back to early English colonialists in Massachusetts, with his paternal great-grandfather, John Leavitt, immigrating to Hingham in the 1630s from Yorkshire, England, and where he subsequently became a prominent tailor, public official, and founding deacon of the Old Ship Church. On Josiah's mother's side, her family belonged to another well-established colonial family in New England.
Following his education at Harvard College, Josiah became a practicing physician at Hingham.Early Hingham Selectmen's Book of Records show that Leavitt had a thriving Hingham practice. But, noted Hingham historian George Lincoln, "his inventive perceptions... led him to seek other fields of employment."Ancestry.com On the side, the mechanically-inclined Leavitt tinkered with inventions and mechanical movements. One of the first products of Leavitt's sideline was a large clock, manufactured in 1772–73, which was subsequently hung in a dormer window on the southwesterly slope of the roof of Old Ship Church, so that the clock's dial could be seen by townspeople.A Discourse Delivered to the First Parish in Hingham, September 8, 1869, Calvin Lincoln, Published by the Parish, Printed by James F. Cotter & Co., Boston, 1873 Leavitt's clock, the first built in Hingham, was probably the only clock he ever built. Where Leavitt garnered his expertise is unknown, although contemporaries noted his mechanical aptitude, as well as the fact that his sister Hannah was married to Hingham watchmaker Joseph Lovis.Early Clockmaking in Hingham, Massachusetts, Hingham Historical Society
In 1774, Leavitt built a large Colonial clapboard home. Leavitt sold the home he built on Main Street to Joseph Blake during the American Revolutionary War, when the physician removed to Boston. The home was later occupied by George Bassett and his heirs.Google Books Search at 93 Main Street, two blocks from the Meetinghouse.Hingham, James Pierotti, Arcadia Publishing, 2005 Shortly afterwards, Leavitt moved to Sterling, Massachusetts,Town of Sterling, Open Space and Recreation Plan where he built another Colonial home, and then a few years later to Boston, where he gave up his medical practice, and began manufacturing organs.
Leavitt embarks on a new career
Because of his musical interests, Leavitt had corresponded with organ builder Bromfield, and was also acquainted with craftsman Johnston, who died in 1768. Shortly afterwards, Leavitt himself relocated to Boston.Reports and Awards, United States Centennial Commission, 1876, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, Pa., 1877
In Boston, Leavitt set about creating a workshop where he and several assistants began building organs for New England churches. On February 8, 1792, an advertisement appeared in The Columbian Centinel announcing that Leavitt had finished an organ destined for the Universalist Religious Society of Boston."Music of the Colonial and Revolutionary Era, p. 144
By the following November, Leavitt had completed a new instrument for the Congregationalist Meetinghouse in Worthington, Connecticut. He was soon building other organs to satisfy the burgeoning demand. The arrival of one of Leavitt's creation at the Worthington meeting house was an event of enough import that The Hartford Courant ran a story about it:
Other churches, now freed from the old Puritan strictures against musical instrument accompaniment, were soon ordering Leavitt's organs. The church of Newburyport,The Newburyport meeting house in which Leavitt's organ was installed was torn down 1801, but Leavitt's 1794 instrument was moved to the new meeting house. But it was replaced in 1834 by a larger organ manufactured by Joseph Alley, one of two organ makers who had established themselves by that time in Newburyport.Frsuu.org Massachusetts, in 1794 set up Leavitt's creation in the gallery of the meeting house, and subsequently showed off its acquisition. "This organ (which is certainly the most elegant of any in New England", noted the town's newspaper the Morning Star, "is about fifteen feet high, ten feet in breadth, and seven feet from front to rear, was built by Dr. Josiah Leavitt, an ingenious organ builder of Boston, for whose benefit there will be a contribution after service is over."History of Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1764–1905, John James Currier, Published by the Author, Newburyport, Mass., 1906
Among other churches which ordered Leavitt organs were the Episcopal church of Dedham, Massachusetts, and TK. His business, though, was still spotty enough that he sometimes advertised his half-completed instruments for sale in regional newspapers.The History of the Organ in the United States, Orpha Caroline Ochse, Indiana University Press, 1988
Later life and legacy
"It was a particular accomplishment that Josiah Leavitt, a Congregationalist, was able to place instruments in dissenting churches", writes Orpha Caroline Ochse in The History of the Organ in the United States. "Many of these churches were still violently opposed to the use of the organ, an attitude that some of them retained through much of the next century."The History of the Organ in the United States, pp 74-75.
Leavitt also trained other later organ builders.In addition to turning out organs, Leavitt and his apprentices had also repaired organs, such as that in the Christ Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an English organ made by John Snetzler in London that arrived in Cambridge in 1764. The organ was later heavily damaged during the Revolutionary War. Leavitt reduced the organ to one keyboard from its initial two, probably because too many pipes were destroyed to accommodate the second keyboard.Si.edu Those who trained under Leavitt also continued to repair, as well as manufacture, organs. Among his pupils were William M. Goodrich, a native of Templeton, Massachusetts, born in 1777. Goodrich himself became an active organ-builder in Boston beginning in 1803. It was Goodrich whom many consider the first advanced American organ manufacturer. In addition to sending out his elegant creations to churches throughout the region, Goodrich trained a number of other makers, including Thomas Appleton, as well as his own brother Ebenezer Goodrich, who later went into business for himself.The Popular Science Monthly, p. 628
Josiah Leavitt died at his Boston home on February 26, 1804.A Boston census of 1790 shows Josiah Leavitt and his wife and a child under the age of 16 residing together.Google Books Search By 1800 Boston records show Josiah Leavitt "organ builder (barrel)" having removed from Rowe's Landing to Winter Street.Google Books Search The golden age of American organ building was still ahead, as New England's increasing prosperity and growing know-how, fostered in part by the early physician turned manufacturer, gave rise to such accomplished organ builders as Hook & Hastings, and the ateliers of Erben, Jardine, and Roosevelt, many of which thrived in Boston and its vicinity, and whose trade was fueled in part by the profits of the large trading firms of Salem and the state capitol.The Popular Science Monthly, p. 630
Josiah Leavitt was buried at Hingham, Massachusetts. Leavitt's second wife Azubah Leavitt's first wife Mary died May 20, 1778, and was interred at Chocksett Burial Ground in the second parish of Lancaster, Massachusetts.Usgwarchives.net Leavitt was counted among the practicing physicians of Sterling, Massachusetts, as of 1774.Google Books Search It is likely that Leavitt's first wife was from Sterling or Lancaster, Massachusetts. died at Boston in November 1803 at age 44.History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Vol. II, Thomas Tracy Bouvé, Published by the Town, University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1893 The Hingham meeting house Old Ship Church did not purchase an organ until 1869. Prior to that the congregants sang unaccompanied.
References
See also John Leavitt List of pipe organ builders Old Ship Church E. and G. G. Hook Organ Pipe organs