Introduction
Born: September 8, 1794, Heath, Massachusetts.
Died: January 16, 1873, Brooklyn, New York.
Buried: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
Born: September 8, 1794, Heath, Massachusetts.
Died: January 16, 1873, Brooklyn, New York.
Buried: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
Joshua was the son of Massachusetts state legislator Roger Leavitt and Chloe Maxwell, and husband of Sarah Williams.
After graduating from Yale College, he practiced law in Putney, Vermont, then entered the Yale Theological Seminary.
He was ordained a Congregational minister at Stratford, Connecticut. After four years there, he moved to New York City, where he became secretary of the American Seamen’s Friend Society, then editor of the Sailors’ Magazine (where he served 44 years).
Other periodicals he edited include The Emancipator, the New York Independent, and the New York Evangelist.
Leavitt is remembered as a social reformer, temperance advocate, abolitionist and religious proselytizer.