John Leavitt (Ohio settler)

Capt. John Wheeler Leavitt (1755–1815), born in Suffield, Connecticut, was an early settler of Ohio's Western Reserve lands, where members of his family had bought large tracts from the state of Connecticut, and where Capt. Leavitt became an early innkeeper, politician and landowner in Warren, Trumbull County, Ohio. Capt. Leavitt was a member of the Connecticut Land Company and along with his cousin Ebenezer King from Suffield, paid over $51,000 for approximately 78,500 acres (318 km²) of Ohio land, which included the township of Warren. The Leavitt family of Warren would go on to play a substantial role in the history of their adopted town and in Ohio.

John Wheeler Leavitt was the son of Abiah (Kent) Leavitt and John Leavitt of Suffield, a carpenter, farmer and landowner whose family was among the first settlers of Suffield. John Leavitt's brother Thaddeus, a prominent Suffield merchant, was among the eight original purchasers of the Western Reserve from the state of Connecticut in 1796. Other extended family members were also involved in purchase of Western Reserve lands including Oliver Ellsworth, whose son Henry Leavitt Ellsworth later traveled to the Reserve to oversee family land grants, staying at the inn belonging to his cousin John Leavitt.

Capt. John Leavitt, a farmer and merchant, married Silence Fitch of Suffield in 1777. In 1800 John Leavitt and his wife set out for the Western Reserve, where the town of Leavittsburg was named for the family with the expectation that it would become the market town for Trumbull County. (John Leavitt was also one of the original proprietors of Aurora, Ohio, with members of the King, Phelps, and Granger families of Suffield. Leavitt was also an original proprietor of Mantua, Ohio.)

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