Henry Leavitt Ellsworth

Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (November 10, 1791 – December 27, 1858) was a Yale-educated attorney who became the first Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, where he encouraged innovation by inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Samuel Colt. Ellsworth also served as the second president of the Aetna Insurance Company, and was a major donor to Yale College, a commissioner to Indian tribes on the western frontier, and the founder of what became the United States Department of Agriculture.

Ellsworth was born in Windsor, Connecticut, son of Founding Father and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott. Ellsworth graduated from Yale University in 1810, and studied law at Tapping Reeve's Litchfield Law School in 1811. On June 22, 1813, he married Nancy Allen Goodrich (daughter of Congressman, Judge, New Haven Mayor and longtime Secretary of the Yale Corporation Elizur Goodrich and his wife Anne Willard Allen) with whom Ellsworth had three children, including son Henry W. Ellsworth.

Later in life, he had two subsequent wives, Marietta Mariana Bartlett and Catherine Smith. Ellsworth was named in part for his grandmother's family, the Leavitts of Suffield, Connecticut. After studying law under Judge Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut, he settled first at Windsor and then at Hartford, where he remained for a decade.

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