The Leavitt Family and the Fight Against Slavery

Continuing my search for Greenfield’s sidewalk art, I found a mural with the words “New Abolition” above a man writing with a quill. Behind him stood a familiar building: the Leavitt-Hovey House, which I had already stopped to learn about. A newspaper titled The Emancipator offered another clue. This artwork connected the house and the Leavitt family to a much wider campaign against slavery.

The Leavitts’ involvement extended across several generations and communities in western Massachusetts. Roger Leavitt, a farmer in Charlemont, served as president of the Franklin County Anti-Slavery Society. His wife, Chloe Maxwell Leavitt, collected signatures on petitions calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Their work shows how the movement depended on meetings, organizing, and persistent efforts to bring public pressure to bear on government

Their son Joshua carried that commitment into national journalism. He became an influential abolitionist editor associated with The Emancipator, the newspaper whose title appears in the mural. The writing desk, quill, and newspaper emphasize the importance of the printed word: articles and arguments could reach readers far beyond a single meeting hall and help turn opposition to slavery into political action.

The words “New Abolition” also recall divisions within the antislavery movement. Some reformers emphasized moral persuasion and distrusted electoral politics; others believed that voting, supporting candidates, and changing laws were essential to ending slavery. Members of the Leavitt family helped establish the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, joining the branch of the movement that pursued political engagement.

The house in the background adds a more complicated family history. Jonathan Leavitt and his wife, Emelia, lived there. Emelia was the daughter of Ezra Stiles, a minister who had enslaved a man named Newport before freeing him in 1778. Newport and his wife, Nabby, later came briefly to Greenfield with Emelia. Their experience reminds us that the history of slavery and emancipation was present within New England households as well as in the distant places abolitionists wrote about.