Emily Wilder Leavitt

Emily Wilder Leavitt (1836–1921) of Boston, Massachusetts, who doubled as an historian and professional genealogist, was one of the first female members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Daughter of an acting mayor of Boston, Miss Leavitt managed to make a living writing the histories of early New England families, compelling her to scour the region's early records.

Emily Wilder Leavitt authored genealogies of many of New England's earliest families, including the Butlers, the Hamiltons (of North Yarmouth), the Blairs, the Dearings, the Starkeys, the Bogmans, the Bethunes, the Conants, the Warrens, the Cranes (of Milton, Massachusetts), the Moreys, the Brainerds (of Connecticut), the Palmers, Putnams, Faneuils, the Morses and many others.

Leavitt was born to an old New England family, the descendant of Thomas Leavitt, a farmer who initially settled at Exeter, New Hampshire, before moving on to Hampton, New Hampshire, where his descendants lived for generations. Miss Leavitt, who never married, was the daughter of Benson Leavitt, briefly acting mayor of Boston in 1845. Emily was born December 26, 1836, in Boston, where her father and mother, the former Abigail Ward, had settled.

In an era when women were largely barred from academia and the history profession, Leavitt was one of a number of women historians who turned to genealogy as a way of making a living — as well as indulging their passion for history. In the case of the Morse family, for instance, whose history Emily Leavitt helped Morse descendant J. Howard Morse write, the Boston genealogist had no Morse ancestors herself, but pocketed a paycheck and provided guidance as an experienced researcher.

By the time the extensive Morse family genealogies were published in the late nineteenth century, during an explosion of interest by New Englanders in their ancestry, Leavitt was 67 years old and had authored or contributed to the history of many New England families. Leavitt frequently wrote her deep-pocketed employers from the confines of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the nation's oldest, and the stationery on which she sent out her status reports bore the estimable Society's letterhead.

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