L. Brooks Leavitt (1878–1941) was an investment banker and antiquarian book collector who served as an overseer of Bowdoin College, to whose library he donated part of his collection of rare books and manuscripts. Born in Wilton, Maine, to a father who was a stagecoach driver who died when Leavitt was young, Brooks Leavitt was an aesthete turned banker whom Maine's poet laureate later eulogized at his funeral.
Leon Brooks Leavitt was born to William Newcomb Leavitt and Ada Idela (Russell) Leavitt [1] in Wilton, Maine, on April 3, 1878. [2] Leavitt's father dropped dead of a heart attack when Brooks Leavitt was attending Wilton Academy. Leavitt subsequently attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he became a voracious reader, and to which he later helped send his younger brother Russell by paying his tuition.
On graduating, Leavitt worked briefly as the principal of a Farmington, Maine high school, and then went to work for the United States Census Bureau. Leavitt subsequently attended George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., and practiced law briefly in New York City, before joining the Wall Street investment banking firm of Bertram, Griscom & Company. [3]
Within a few years, Leavitt joined the investment banking firm of Paine, Webber & Co., where he worked at the firm's headquarters on Wall Street in Manhattan. Leavitt became a bond specialist, and was later one of the partners in charge of the company. While working at Paine Webber, Leavitt indulged his true loves – literature, oriental carpets and the companionship of artists and writers of the day. Having eventually made a fortune on Wall Street, Leavitt retired back to his beloved Maine.
One of Leavitt's lifelong friends was Robert P. T. Coffin, a fellow Mainer, Bowdoin graduate and Bowdoin professor. Coffin dedicated his novel Captain Abbey and Captain John to his friend Leavitt, "a fellow son of Maine." Following Leavitt's death from heart disease, Coffin eulogized him in his poem "Brooks Leavitt", read at Leavitt's 1941 funeral in Wilton. A longtime patron of the arts, Brooks Leavitt was close to many New York artists and actors, including Francis Wilson, the foremost Broadway stage actor of his day. [4] Among other of Leavitt's lifelong friends was the American explorer Donald Baxter MacMillan, with whom Leavitt regularly corresponded. [5]
Among the manuscripts owned and collected by Leavitt, who turned to book collecting after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, was an original Shakespeare First Folio, as well as the original manuscript of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, written in Lawrence's own hand.
Leavitt was married to the former Elizabeth Burns Purman, who was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Dr. James Jackson Purman and Mary Witherow Purman of Washington, D.C. Dr Purman was the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in the battle of Gettysburg. Brooks Leavitt and his wife lived in Manhattan and at their second home in Leavitt's birthplace of Wilton, Maine, where the couple's home was designed by the Maine architect John Calvin Stevens. [6] The couple had no children. Brooks Leavitt served as an overseer of Bowdoin College, and subsequently donated manuscripts to the Bowdoin Library by alumni Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin Pierce, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. [7] [8]
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.
Weld is a town in Franklin County, Maine, United States. The population was 376 at the 2020 census. Set beside Webb Lake and almost surrounded by mountains, Weld is noted for its scenic beauty. It is home to Mount Blue State Park, Camp Kawanhee for Boys, and Camp Lawroweld.
Bowdoin College is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint engineering programs with Columbia, Caltech, Dartmouth College, and the University of Maine.
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with Harvard University; Anglicanism; and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Roswell Leavitt Gilpatric was a New York City corporate attorney and government official who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1961–64, when he played a pivotal role in the high-stake strategies of the Cuban Missile Crisis, advising President John F. Kennedy as well as Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy on dealing with the Soviet nuclear missile threat. Gilpatric later served as Chairman of the Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation in 1964.
John Fairfield was an attorney and politician from Maine. He served as a U.S. Congressman, governor and U.S. Senator.
Jonathan Cilley was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine. He served part of one term in the 25th Congress, and died as the result of a wound sustained in a duel with another Congressman, William J. Graves of Kentucky.
Stephen Longfellow was a U.S. Representative from Maine.
Jesse Appleton was the second president of Bowdoin College and the father of First Lady Jane Pierce.
Samuel Harris was the fifth president of Bowdoin College and the first to be an alumnus. After having left Bowdoin in 1871, he went on to teach at Yale Divinity School for 25 years.
Calvin Ellis Stowe was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States. Over his career, he was a professor of languages and Biblical and sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary, Dartmouth College, Lane Theological Seminary, and Bowdoin College. He was the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Isaac McLellan was an American author and poet, some of whose work has achieved notability through publication in anthologies.
Sturgis Elleno Leavitt (1888–1976) was the Kenan Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina, the author of many books on Spanish language and literature, the president of several Spanish language teaching organizations, an adviser to the U.S. State Department and for many years the chairman of the Southern Humanities Conference as well as editor of the Hispanic Review.
Ashley Day Leavitt (1877–1959) was a Yale-educated Congregational minister who led the State Street Church in Portland, Maine, and later the Harvard Congregational Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Leavitt was a frequent public speaker during the early twentieth century, and was awarded an honorary degree from Bowdoin College for his pastorship of several congregations during wartime.
Jeremiah Pearson Hardy (1800–1888) was a painter who spent most of his career in Bangor, Maine and specialized in portraits. He was also the central figure in a circle of 19th-century Bangor painters that included his daughter, Anna Eliza Hardy (1839–1934), sister Mary Ann Hardy, and pupils Isabel Graham Eaton, Walter Franklin Lansil and George Edward Dale.
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The Nathaniel Hawthorne Boyhood Home is a historic house at Raymond Cape Road and Hawthorne Road in Raymond, Maine. Built about 1812, the house was the childhood home of author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Its interior, now much altered, serves as a function space for a community organization dedicated to its preservation. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.