Lemuel Sturtevant Leavitt
Lemuel Sturtevant Leavitt was destined to be a rescuer. Barely eight when his parents embraced a new faith, they began a saga of pioneering that would last his long and eventful life.
Pioneering rigors resulted in early maturity. In his teens he saw his ailing widowed mother and five younger siblings safely across continent. At the point they seemed safe, Lemuel strove ahead to prepare a crude cabin to receive his weary charges as the company straggled in.
He married Laura Melvina Thompson in October 1850, and built a pretty house for his pretty bride. Children came and when there were four there came a startling call. “Leave the pretty house, take the pretty bride and the little ones. Go to the far end of the territory to rescue the Indians starving there.” So with his mother, children, and siblings, he joined the company on the Santa Clara, known as the Southern Indian Mission.
Six more years of struggle. Four more children born. Then tragedy. Laura Melvina Thompson Leavitt, the pretty bride with 8 children under 12, died and left them sorrowing.
Sorrow notwithstanding, a dire winter lay ahead, Lemuel, intent on rescue, drove his teams over the snowy mountains to bring back flour for bread for the settlement.
Within the year, gentle Betsy Speckler came to mother the brood. She bore a baby girl, who was four when Betsy died. The family was motherless again.
A lonely man with eight children. Mary Ann Morgan, an English woman with two little boys who needed to be rescued. They married to solve their mutual need. Now they numbered 12 and enjoyed a small space of peace in Santa Clara. To them two baby boys were born. One survived.
But down along the creek a young father of eight children was breathing his last. William Noble Waite died, leaving his young widow and 8 children, the eldest at just 11-years-old. Everyone agreed a rescue was necessary. Rebecca Gibbons Waite accepted the solution and married Lemuel Sturtevant Leavitt. They made a home in Bunkerville for the eight Waite children and three more born to Rebecca and Lemuel.
All the children testified that they were, each one, reared equal in the love and care that abode in their homes.