♂Moses Leavitt

Moses Leavitt (1650 – about 1731) was a settler and town officer of Exeter, in the Province of New Hampshire^W, and the husband of Dorothy Dudley, a daughter of the town’s minister, Samuel Dudley. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Stephen Leavitt.

Family

Moses was a son of John Leavitt of Hingham, Massachusetts, and his second wife, Sarah, and was baptized at Hingham on 12 August 1650. His father’s will, dated 30 November 1689 and proved at Boston on 27 January 1691/2, names him among five sons and four daughters. He was one of five Leavitt brothers and half-brothers who left Hingham for Exeter, where he bought land in 1676, and he worked as a land surveyor.

He married Dorothy Dudley at Exeter on 26 October 1681. In 1689 her brother Samuel Dudley conveyed to him half of a two-hundred-acre tract. When the Reverend Samuel Dudley’s estate was inventoried, two cows and other goods were in Moses’s hands, and in 1702 Dudley’s widow, Elizabeth, was living with Moses and Dorothy. They had six sons, Moses, Timothy, Stephen, Joseph, John and Dudley, and five daughters, Dorothy, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah and Mary.

Lines of descent

Through their son Stephen, Moses and Dorothy were the great-grandparents of Anna Smith, who married Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), a great-great-grandson of Samuel Dudley through Dorothy’s brother Stephen Dudley. Nathaniel and Anna were thus both great-great-grandchildren of Samuel Dudley, and third cousins.

Town affairs

Exeter granted him fifty acres on 31 January 1681, and a hundred acres in April 1702 to “Mr. Moses Leavitt, Sr.” He was among the Exeter landholders sued by Robert Tufton Mason^W, who in the 1680s claimed the lands of the province. In October 1690 the town chose him with Biley Dudley and Kinsley Hall to treat with Elder William Wentworth about staying on as its minister. He sat on the committee chosen in January 1696 to build a new meeting-house, and on the committee that seated the congregation in it in February 1698, when he and his family were given a pew beside that of Kinsley Hall, the husband of Dorothy’s sister Elizabeth. When the church was gathered again at the ordination of the Reverend John Clark, on 21 September 1698, he signed its covenant. He served in the garrison at Exeter from 28 July to 22 September 1696, during King William’s War^W, and after Clark’s death in 1705 he was one of the men charged with finding a new minister.

He was a selectman in 1682–1683, 1691, 1696 and 1717, represented Exeter in 1693, 1695, 1698 and 1702, and was moderator of the town meeting seven times. He became a justice of the peace in 1699 and was a deacon of the church.

Will and death

Moses Leavitt made his will at Exeter on 31 December 1730, “being aged and feeble,” and it was proved on 6 June 1731; he died between those dates. Dorothy had died before him, as had their daughter Mary, and he left the clothing of both to their daughter Dorothy, with a room in the house for the rest of her life. The will names the married daughters as Elizabeth Fifield, Sarah Liford and Hannah Gillman, and a grandson, Francis Lyford. His eldest son, Moses, who settled at Stratham, received fifty acres near the Great Hill; Dudley received the home lot and a share in a sawmill, and he and John were the executors. They gave their bond on 16 June 1731, with Benjamin Smith as surety.

Notes

Parentage

The one contemporary record that names a son Moses is John Leavitt’s will of 1689, which lists nine children (Samuel, Israel, Moses, Josiah and Nehemiah, and four daughters) but gives no residence for any of them. The link to the man at Exeter rests on there being no other Moses in the will and on the compiled works. Savage’s genealogical dictionary (1861) makes him John’s son and gives 12 August 1650 as his birth. A history of Hingham published in 1893 enters “Moses, bt. Aug. 12, 1650” among the eight children of John’s second wife, Sarah, with the note that he removed to Exeter; those eight, with Samuel of the first marriage, make the nine of the will. The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire (1928–1939) also names his mother as Sarah. The Hingham town book’s copy for the years around 1650 has no Leavitt birth or baptism, so the date rests on these compiled works. The surveyor’s trade is from a Dudley family history of 1886, which is also the source for the 1689 conveyance, the estate inventory and Elizabeth Dudley’s living with the couple in 1702; the later dictionary gives the conveyance as half of two hundred acres.

The children

Savage names five sons, John, Dudley, Daniel, Stephen and Joseph, and says the names of seven more children were unknown to him. Neither the Genealogical Dictionary nor Moses’s own will has a Daniel. The dictionary has Hannah unmarried in 1730, but the will calls her Hannah Gillman. A printed abstract of the will that Moses of Stratham made on 5 February 1754 refers to land “given me by my Honour’d Father, Moses Leavit of Exeter in said Province Esquire Deceas’d, in his Last Will and Testament” and to “my Brother Dudley Leavit of Exeter” as that will’s executor.

Offices and dates

The history of Exeter published in 1888 says he was selectman in 1682 and three other years, representative in 1693 and three other years, and moderator seven times; the years given above for selectman and representative, the justiceship and the deaconship are from the Genealogical Dictionary. The marriage, the land grants, the Mason suit and the church and garrison entries are from the town records printed in the 1888 history. The will is printed in full in the provincial probate records of New Hampshire. A compiled family genealogy gives 16 June 1731, the day of the executors’ bond, as the date of proof; the will’s own entry says 6 June.