Thomas Leavitt (banker)

Thomas Leavitt (1795–1850) was an early president of the Bank of New Brunswick in his native Saint John, New Brunswick. Leavitt was also a diplomat, politician and powerful Canadian businessman with interests in the shipping industry.

Thomas Leavitt was the descendant of early New Hampshire settlers. His father Jonathan Leavitt (1746–1811) was a mariner who arrived in New Brunswick from New Hampshire in 1764. Capt. Jonathan Leavitt's wife was Hephzibah (Peabody) Leavitt, daughter of Capt. Francis Peabody, a Massachusetts native who came north following the French and Indian War to settle lands he was granted to form a township in New Brunswick.

Capt. Leavitt arrived in New Brunswick in August 1762 aboard ship from Newburyport, Massachusetts, with father-in-law Peabody, as well as James Simmons and James White, for whom he worked as a mariner at the firm of shipowners Simmons, Hazen & White, whose partners he was related to by marriage. (Leavitt and James Simmons and James White had married daughters of Francis Peabody). Jonathan Leavitt had eight sons, including Thomas Leavitt, and two daughters.

The Leavitt family later joined their relations in the shipping business, becoming shipowners, mariners and prominent merchants in Saint John, which following the Revolutionary War had a substantial American Loyalist population. By 1774, mariner Leavitt was actively engaged in shipbuilding, joining forces that year with brother-in-law Samuel Peabody to order construction of one of the earliest schooners built in New Brunswick, the Menaguashe.

Early in his career, mariner Leavitt grew discouraged with his prospects, fearing that New Brunswick would never support a shipping industry like that of Boston or Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jonathan Leavitt and his brother Daniel mulled over moving elsewhere where "there was a larger population and more business", reported The New Brunswick Magazine. Leavitt's brother-in-law and sometime employer James White intervened, telling the two brothers: "Don't be discouraged, boys, keep up a good heart! Why ships will come here from England yet!"

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