--- title: The Disappearing Leveretts description: The Disappearing Leveretts image: https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Alicia-Crane-Williams-Apr-21-2023-05-25-34-5698-PM.jpg --- # [Vita Brevis A resource for family history from AmericanAncestors.org](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/) This is a search field with an auto-suggest feature attached. - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. # The Disappearing Leveretts [January 15, 2014](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2014/01/disappearing-leveretts) [Early New England Families Study Project](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/tag/early-new-england-families-study-project), [American History](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/tag/american-history), [Family stories](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/tag/family-stories) [Alicia Crane Williams](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/author/acwilliams) *[![Alicia Crane Williams](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Alicia-Crane-Williams-Apr-21-2023-05-25-34-5698-PM.jpg?width=200&height=260&name=Alicia-Crane-Williams-Apr-21-2023-05-25-34-5698-PM.jpg "Alicia Crane Williams")](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Alicia-Crane-Williams-Apr-21-2023-05-25-34-5698-PM.jpg)*I cannot imagine the faith that John Leverett and his wives, Hannah Hudson and Sarah Sedgwick, must have had to cope with deaths of so many of their children. By his two wives, John was the father of eighteen children, eleven of whom died as infants or young children. *Six* of these children were given the name Sarah after their mother, and five of them died before the sixth survived. Three sons were named John, none of whom lived to grow up. John Leverett kept meticulous records of the births and deaths of his children in his Bible, noting the time of day and sometimes the tide. The record of his seventeenth child, one of the Sarahs, states that she was born at “10 clock in the evening at Low water” on 30 June 1670, baptized on 3 July, and “departed 16 day july at 2 a clock afternoon, halfe flood.” John, Hannah, and Sarah knew nothing, of course, about chromosomes or DNA. To them each pregnancy and each death was the will of God, but clearly there was a genetic problem in the Leverett family that can be traced at least one more generation back to John’s parents. Thomas and Ann (Fitch) Leverett had fifteen children, nine of them boys, but only John and his sister Ann lived to marry. Of John’s children, only one boy out of five survived. Sarah, John’s second wife (who was fourteen years younger than he), had fourteen pregnancies that resulted in the birth of a child. In a world where the leading cause of death for women was childbirth, she survived her husband by 26 years and died at age 74. It is the extreme number of children John fathered that allows us to see the genetic problem. If he had had only a few children, even a death rate of 60 percent could be considered possible, since child mortality was high because of disease and other environmental factors. The Leverett problem appears to have been Y-chromosome related. A study of the next generations of Leveretts would definitely be interesting. John’s son Hudson (named for his mother’s family) was the only surviving male of his generation. He had two sons to survive, of which the elder was President John Leverett of Harvard, who had nine children but was only survived by two daughters. Thus the Leverett surname continued only through Hudson’s younger son, Thomas. ### Share this: - [mailto:?body=https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2014/01/disappearing-leveretts](mailto:?body=https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2014/01/disappearing-leveretts) - - - More - - ![Alicia Crane Williams](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/hubfs/Williams_Alicia.jpg) ## About Alicia Crane Williams Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, Lead Genealogist of Early Families of New England Study Project, has compiled and edited numerous important genealogical publications including The Mayflower Descendant and the Alden Family “Silver Book” Five Generations project of the Mayflower Society. Most recently, she is the author of the 2017 edition of The Babson Genealogy, 1606-2017, Descendants of Thomas and Isabel Babson who first arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1637. Alicia has served as Historian of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, Assistant Historian General at the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and as Genealogist of the Alden Kindred of America. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and a master’s degree in History from Northeastern University.[View all posts by Alicia Crane Williams →](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/author/acwilliams) [← Social media for genealogists](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2014/01/social-media-for-genealogists) [New Blog Features →](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2014/01/new-blog-features) This is a search field with an auto-suggest feature attached. - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. ### Recent Posts [Sailor Bill and His Forgotten Wife](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/sailor-bill-and-his-forgotten-wife) [Professor X](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/professor-x) [Part I: Malaga Island, Maine](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/part-i-malaga-island-maine) [The Norwegian folge](https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/the-norwegian-folge) [Research…in a Miniskirt? 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