Jeremiah Leavitt III, 1827 — 1916
In the middle of a cold, Canadian winter, 10th February 1822, Jeremiah Leavitt III was born. He was the eldest son and fourth child of his parents Jeremiah and Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt. He was reared with responsibilities on his father’s farm and was nurtured by his mother, a prayerful and humble woman.
When the extended Leavitt family, urged by their faith, became determined to leave their homes in Canada and journey to join the Latter-Day Saints, Jeremiah at fifteen years of age drove the second of his father’s two wagons on the month long journey to Kirtland, Ohio.
The day after their arrival Jeremiah was baptized on 22 August 1837 by one of the missionaries who had preached the gospel to them in Canada. As the family journeyed towards Nauvoo, Illinois Jeremiah worked with his father raising crops, building fences and homes to sustain their large family. By the time they reached Nauvoo, Jeremiah had grown into a man and was well established in his newfound faith.
At Nauvoo he met and married Eliza Hanover, a beautiful young woman from Washington, D.C. who had recently joined the church. They were attracted to one another from the first and after a brief courtship were married on 1 Feb 1845. A few months later Jeremiah was ordained a Seventy in the 25th Quorum in the City of Joseph.
Jeremiah and Eliza crossed the plains in 1852 with five children under the age of seven. They faithfully journeyed to Zion not only physically but also spiritually, as their generosity and service to others became their strength
Family was important and they made great effort to be close to them; continuing that tradition from Canada to Nauvoo and across the plains to the great American West, finally settling in southern Utah where they continued on energetically fencing, farming and rearing their children.
They had a humble home where they gleaned all they had from the soil and the hard labor of their hands. They tilled the soil, hoed the weeds, irrigated the land and watched the floods wash it away, and then they started over again. As times improved Jeremiah spent weeks in the late summer taking loads of fruit, beans, and sorghum north to trade for other goods. They lived at various times in Santa Clara, the Meadows, Panaca, Clover Valley, Hebron and Gunlock which they considered to be “home.” Nine of their twelve children grew to maturity forging bonds with family and friends, which have crossed the generations and are alive and vibrant still today.
Jeremiah took Eliza to the Endowment House in 1862 to be sealed as husband and wife. In 1877 at the creation of the Gunlock Ward he and his brother Dudley performed priesthood ordinances for each other’s family members and while in Hebron, Jeremiah served as a ward teacher. As further evidence of his testimony of the restored gospel two of his children were named Emma and Joseph Smith Leavitt.
Jeremiah’s pioneering included crossing a continent, floods, the death of three daughters, the sun parched southern Utah desert, Indian trouble and cholera. His life was cut short by an accidental inhalation of poisonous insecticide he had applied to his farm ground. Exactly one week after his mother died, Jeremiah III followed her in death on 12 April 1878. Eliza, his dear wife lived another twenty-seven years as a widow. They are buried in the Gunlock Cemetery.
We pay tribute to this great man whose kind and generous ways coupled with the strength of his testimony has left his family a legacy of courage and faith.
The Western Association of Leavitt Families – August 30, 2008