Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt
Encyclopedia
Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt (1830–1912) was a divorced Boston
schoolteacher who became the first round-the-world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU), of which she was a founding member. Launching herself on virtually non-stop worldwide tours over a decade, she "went to all continents save Antarctica," including to such far-flung locales as Japan
, Australia
, India
, South America
and Turkey
, where she crusaded against alcohol and its evils, also speaking out for other feminist causes like women's suffrage
.
. These, later published as Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils and Remedy of Intemperance (1826), ignited a growing chorus from church pulpits against alcohol abuse and urging prohibition
. Beecher's sermons later informed the WCTU's prophecies of the ill effects of booze: domestic violence; homelessness; and oppression of women.
The temperance movement was born in Ohio
and New York State in 1873 when local women, concerned about alcohol's influence on home life, met in churches for prayer and then embarked on visits to saloons to confront those they felt responsible. During the next couple of years, the movement caught fire, with women demanding that saloons cease selling alcohol. The women of Fredonia, New York
were the first credited with visiting local saloons under the aegis of their leader Mrs. Esther McNeil and, on December 22, 1873 were the first to call themselves the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Two days later, following a lecture at the Hillsboro, Ohio
Music Hall the night before, the Crusade was born when Mrs. Eliza Thompson
, a judge's wife and the daughter of a former governor, gathered 70 women in prayer at the Presbyterian Church and marched to the local saloons. Singing hymns as they went, the women demanded the saloons cease selling alcohol.
The movement caught fire. In an age when women were barred from voting, and where domestic violence – short of murder – was rarely addressed by courts, the anti-alcohol crusade hit a tripwire of emotions. In addition to banning alcohol sales, WCTU missionaries were early proponents of women's suffrage
, actively campaigning for the right to vote. Among early WCTU activists were women who later came to be identified primarily as suffragettes, including Carrie Nation
of Kansas
.
, the daughter of Baptist
minister Rev. Joshua Clement and his wife Eliza (Harvey) Clement. Mary Leavitt was educated at Thetford Academy
in Thetford, Vermont
and later at the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham, Massachusetts
, where she was valedictorian
.
Early on, the minister's daughter became interested in the emerging women's movement, then starting to embrace temperance and suffrage, and she was among the temperance movement's earliest activists. "Past middle age and granite-faced," writes Patricia Ward D'Itri in Crosscurrents in the International Women's Movement, "she had what biographers described as an unfortunate family resemblance to George Washington
".
while Leavitt was visiting evangelist
Dwight L. Moody
, whom she often assisted in worship services. Leavitt subsequently organized the first WCTU chapter in Boston
, and served as its president from 1879 until 1880.
The following year Leavitt abandoned the private school she operated and went to work fulltime for the WCTU, traveling through New England
to promote temperance and women's suffage. She became the first superintendent of the Franchise Department of the national WCTU, and also represented the New England Women's Suffrage Association.
Leavitt's early work brought results, and the WCTU asked in July 1883 that she travel to California
, Oregon
and Washington to help organize WCTU chapters. Following that trip, Frances Willard requested that Leavitt's talents be used abroad, asking her new emissary to undertake a mission to the Far East
to assess what the WCTU could do to organize international temperance efforts. Leavitt was designated the WCTU's "Superintendent of Reconnaissance for World's WCTU". The purpose of her first mission abroad, said the organization's newsletter tentatively, would be visiting Hawaii
and the Far East "endeavoring to introduce the W.C.T.U. methods and to provide for a helpful interchange of sympathy."
Leavitt's journey did not begin auspiciously; she left America with no financial backing from the national organization and only $35 in her pocket – from her own funds. "She has no capital save her faith", WCTU founder Frances Willard noted in the group's publication, The Union Signal. Willard told her followers: "Let me affectionately urge you to pray definitely for Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt and her embassy, the most distant echo of the great Ohio crusade, the farthest outreaching of the gospel temperance wave."
But the times were right for Leavitt's message. Temperance crusaders found willing listeners among women in places like Australia
. In 1885, for instance, 45,000 women in Victoria
– almost a quarter of Australia's adult females – signed a petition to the government demanding that it introduce local legislation to protect the female sex from the "ill usage" said to sometimes accompany alcohol abuse.
On her 1884 trip to Australia, Leavitt founded five branches of the WCTU in Queensland
, one in New South Wales
, one in South Australia
and three in Tasmania
. In a trip the following year, when she was still a WCTU freelancer, Leavitt visited the Hawaiian Islands
, Madagascar
, India
, China
, Madeira
, Mauritius
, Ceylon
, Siam
, the Straits Settlements, Burma, Korea
, Japan
and Europe
. At stops along the way, Leavitt organized more WCTU chapters, often presiding over meetings at YMCAs and other gathering places where WCTU affiliates were formed and officers elected. By the end of her decade of travels, Leavitt had organized over 86 worldwide WCTU international chapters, and some 21 men's temperance societies in over 40 countries.
Leavitt's mission surpassed the wildest aspirations of WCTU's leadership. Eventually, while Leavitt was embarked on her nearly ceaseless international travels, Frances Willard created at WCTU headquarters the Leavitt Fund, designed to finance Leavitt's travels and proselytizing. Eventually, because the chapters Leavitt founded became largely self-sustaining, and because the Boston activist covered her own expenses through individual donations, the Leavitt Fund was applied towards supporting other WCTU foreign missionaries.
As the worldwide temperance movement caught fire, crusaders like Leavitt, who had helped found WCTU chapters in India, found that their reformist ideals led them to other causes as well. Leavitt and others, for instance, began questioning the need for continued British rule in India
. And native Indian-born reformers, drawn to the temperance crusade, spread their reformist ideas among the temperance forces. Pandita Ramabai
, for instance, who was a leading female crusader in 1880s India against confinement of widows and child brides, joined forces with the WCTU, for whom she acted as an unofficial missionary and lecturer.
But the message of Leavitt and other WCTU reformers were not always received so warmly abroad, where their mingling of temperance and suffrage and emerging women's rights issues were sometimes complicated by cultural differences or long-held taboos. In Japan
, for instance, where Leavitt embarked on a campaign which, she wrote, would "work on education, on scientific and Biblical lines, tobacco and chastity at least", her campaign was regarded suspiciously. Shortly after her arrival, the American-born reformer was told by a Japanese government official that "your mission here is doing for Japanese women what Commodore Perry
did for the country." In other places, Leavitt's message against tobacco, opium, alcohol and sex outside marriage did not necessarily sit well, not to mention her calls for women's right to vote. In some locales different customs presented the WCTU crusader with unlikely predicaments: in Bangkok
, for instance, she met with Thailand's King Chulalongkorn at the palace where he kept his harem. (But Leavitt's attitude towards the polygamist potentate was somewhat muted, thanks to the monarch's large donation towards a home for impoverished elderly women).
Leavitt continued her travels, which eventually encompassed Scandinavia
, Turkey
, South America
, India
, Italy
, Egypt
, South Africa
, China
, Siam
, Burma, Singapore
and many other countries. Midway through Leavitt's travels, the WCTU reckoned that their emissary had "traveled over 100,000 miles in 43 different countries; crossed the Equator eight times; held over 1,600 meetings; had the services of 290 different interpreters in 47 languages and formed 130 temperance societies, 86 of them WCTUs, and 23 branches of the White Cross." Left out of the tally were the so-called "Bands of Hope" Leavitt founded for the protection of children.
in 1912. The fate of the New England
schoolteacher's ex-husband, Thomas H. Leavitt, a Vermont
native and Boston real estate broker whom she married in 1857, was not chronicled – nor whether he enjoyed alcoholic beverages. Mrs. Leavitt's daughter Amy, educated at her mother's "Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt's Private School in Boston", later became a translator and musician after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music
. Mary Leavitt and Thomas H. Leavitt had two other daughters, Agnes and Edith.
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
schoolteacher who became the first round-the-world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in...
(WCTU), of which she was a founding member. Launching herself on virtually non-stop worldwide tours over a decade, she "went to all continents save Antarctica," including to such far-flung locales as Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, where she crusaded against alcohol and its evils, also speaking out for other feminist causes like women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
.
The Temperance Movement
In 1810 a well-known series of sermons against distilled spirits, was delivered by Congregational minister Lyman BeecherLyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, American Temperance Society co-founder and leader, and the father of 13 children, many of whom were noted leaders, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas...
. These, later published as Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils and Remedy of Intemperance (1826), ignited a growing chorus from church pulpits against alcohol abuse and urging prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
. Beecher's sermons later informed the WCTU's prophecies of the ill effects of booze: domestic violence; homelessness; and oppression of women.
The temperance movement was born in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and New York State in 1873 when local women, concerned about alcohol's influence on home life, met in churches for prayer and then embarked on visits to saloons to confront those they felt responsible. During the next couple of years, the movement caught fire, with women demanding that saloons cease selling alcohol. The women of Fredonia, New York
Fredonia, New York
Fredonia is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 11,068 as of 2009.The Village of Fredonia is in the Town of Pomfret south of Lake Erie...
were the first credited with visiting local saloons under the aegis of their leader Mrs. Esther McNeil and, on December 22, 1873 were the first to call themselves the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Two days later, following a lecture at the Hillsboro, Ohio
Hillsboro, Ohio
Hillsboro is a city in and the county seat of Highland County, Ohio, United States. The population was 6,605 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Hillsboro is located at ....
Music Hall the night before, the Crusade was born when Mrs. Eliza Thompson
Eliza Thompson
A lecture by Diocletian Lewis in 1873 inspired Eliza Thompson to begin leading groups of women into saloons where they sang hymns prayed for the closure of the establishments...
, a judge's wife and the daughter of a former governor, gathered 70 women in prayer at the Presbyterian Church and marched to the local saloons. Singing hymns as they went, the women demanded the saloons cease selling alcohol.
The movement caught fire. In an age when women were barred from voting, and where domestic violence – short of murder – was rarely addressed by courts, the anti-alcohol crusade hit a tripwire of emotions. In addition to banning alcohol sales, WCTU missionaries were early proponents of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, actively campaigning for the right to vote. Among early WCTU activists were women who later came to be identified primarily as suffragettes, including Carrie Nation
Carrie Nation
Carrie Amelia Moore Nation was a member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol in pre-Prohibition America. She is particularly noteworthy for promoting her viewpoint through vandalism. On many occasions Nation would enter an alcohol-serving establishment and attack the bar with a hatchet...
of Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
.
Early life
Mary Leavitt was born Mary Greenleaf Clement in Hopkinton, New HampshireHopkinton, New Hampshire
Hopkinton is a town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,589 at the 2010 census. It consists of three villages: Hopkinton, West Hopkinton, and Contoocook...
, the daughter of Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
minister Rev. Joshua Clement and his wife Eliza (Harvey) Clement. Mary Leavitt was educated at Thetford Academy
Thetford Academy
Thetford Academy is a historic independent school in Thetford, Vermont. It is the state's oldest secondary school.The co-educational school was founded in February 1819 by local citizens and was granted a charter by the legislature in October of the that same year...
in Thetford, Vermont
Thetford, Vermont
Thetford is a town in Orange County, Vermont, United States in the Connecticut River Valley. The population was 2,617 at the 2000 census. Villages within the town include East Thetford, North Thetford, Thetford Hill, Thetford Center, Rices Mills and Post Mills. The town office is in Thetford...
and later at the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham, Massachusetts
Framingham, Massachusetts
Framingham is a New England town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 68,318 as of the United States 2010 Census. -History:...
, where she was valedictorian
Valedictorian
Valedictorian is an academic title conferred upon the student who delivers the closing or farewell statement at a graduation ceremony. Usually, the valedictorian is the highest ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution...
.
Early on, the minister's daughter became interested in the emerging women's movement, then starting to embrace temperance and suffrage, and she was among the temperance movement's earliest activists. "Past middle age and granite-faced," writes Patricia Ward D'Itri in Crosscurrents in the International Women's Movement, "she had what biographers described as an unfortunate family resemblance to George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
".
Work
In 1873 the Boston schoolteacher became interested in the temperance movement after meeting Frances WillardFrances Willard (suffragist)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution...
while Leavitt was visiting evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
Dwight L. Moody
Dwight L. Moody
Dwight Lyman Moody , also known as D.L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts , the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.-Early life:Dwight Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts to a large...
, whom she often assisted in worship services. Leavitt subsequently organized the first WCTU chapter in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, and served as its president from 1879 until 1880.
The following year Leavitt abandoned the private school she operated and went to work fulltime for the WCTU, traveling through New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
to promote temperance and women's suffage. She became the first superintendent of the Franchise Department of the national WCTU, and also represented the New England Women's Suffrage Association.
Leavitt's early work brought results, and the WCTU asked in July 1883 that she travel to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
and Washington to help organize WCTU chapters. Following that trip, Frances Willard requested that Leavitt's talents be used abroad, asking her new emissary to undertake a mission to the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
to assess what the WCTU could do to organize international temperance efforts. Leavitt was designated the WCTU's "Superintendent of Reconnaissance for World's WCTU". The purpose of her first mission abroad, said the organization's newsletter tentatively, would be visiting Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
and the Far East "endeavoring to introduce the W.C.T.U. methods and to provide for a helpful interchange of sympathy."
Leavitt's journey did not begin auspiciously; she left America with no financial backing from the national organization and only $35 in her pocket – from her own funds. "She has no capital save her faith", WCTU founder Frances Willard noted in the group's publication, The Union Signal. Willard told her followers: "Let me affectionately urge you to pray definitely for Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt and her embassy, the most distant echo of the great Ohio crusade, the farthest outreaching of the gospel temperance wave."
But the times were right for Leavitt's message. Temperance crusaders found willing listeners among women in places like Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In 1885, for instance, 45,000 women in Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
– almost a quarter of Australia's adult females – signed a petition to the government demanding that it introduce local legislation to protect the female sex from the "ill usage" said to sometimes accompany alcohol abuse.
On her 1884 trip to Australia, Leavitt founded five branches of the WCTU in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, one in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
, one in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
and three in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
. In a trip the following year, when she was still a WCTU freelancer, Leavitt visited the Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...
, Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Madeira
Madeira
Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...
, Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
, Ceylon
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, Siam
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, the Straits Settlements, Burma, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. At stops along the way, Leavitt organized more WCTU chapters, often presiding over meetings at YMCAs and other gathering places where WCTU affiliates were formed and officers elected. By the end of her decade of travels, Leavitt had organized over 86 worldwide WCTU international chapters, and some 21 men's temperance societies in over 40 countries.
Leavitt's mission surpassed the wildest aspirations of WCTU's leadership. Eventually, while Leavitt was embarked on her nearly ceaseless international travels, Frances Willard created at WCTU headquarters the Leavitt Fund, designed to finance Leavitt's travels and proselytizing. Eventually, because the chapters Leavitt founded became largely self-sustaining, and because the Boston activist covered her own expenses through individual donations, the Leavitt Fund was applied towards supporting other WCTU foreign missionaries.
As the worldwide temperance movement caught fire, crusaders like Leavitt, who had helped found WCTU chapters in India, found that their reformist ideals led them to other causes as well. Leavitt and others, for instance, began questioning the need for continued British rule in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. And native Indian-born reformers, drawn to the temperance crusade, spread their reformist ideas among the temperance forces. Pandita Ramabai
Pandita Ramabai
Pandita Ramabai was a social reformer and activist. She was born as Hindu, started Arya Mahila Samaj and later converted to Christianity to serve widows and helpless women of India....
, for instance, who was a leading female crusader in 1880s India against confinement of widows and child brides, joined forces with the WCTU, for whom she acted as an unofficial missionary and lecturer.
But the message of Leavitt and other WCTU reformers were not always received so warmly abroad, where their mingling of temperance and suffrage and emerging women's rights issues were sometimes complicated by cultural differences or long-held taboos. In Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, for instance, where Leavitt embarked on a campaign which, she wrote, would "work on education, on scientific and Biblical lines, tobacco and chastity at least", her campaign was regarded suspiciously. Shortly after her arrival, the American-born reformer was told by a Japanese government official that "your mission here is doing for Japanese women what Commodore Perry
Commodore Perry
Commodore Perry may refer to:* Commodore Matthew Perry , United States Navy officer* Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry , United States Navy officer* Commodore Perry Owens , American gunfighter...
did for the country." In other places, Leavitt's message against tobacco, opium, alcohol and sex outside marriage did not necessarily sit well, not to mention her calls for women's right to vote. In some locales different customs presented the WCTU crusader with unlikely predicaments: in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
, for instance, she met with Thailand's King Chulalongkorn at the palace where he kept his harem. (But Leavitt's attitude towards the polygamist potentate was somewhat muted, thanks to the monarch's large donation towards a home for impoverished elderly women).
Leavitt continued her travels, which eventually encompassed Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Siam
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Burma, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and many other countries. Midway through Leavitt's travels, the WCTU reckoned that their emissary had "traveled over 100,000 miles in 43 different countries; crossed the Equator eight times; held over 1,600 meetings; had the services of 290 different interpreters in 47 languages and formed 130 temperance societies, 86 of them WCTUs, and 23 branches of the White Cross." Left out of the tally were the so-called "Bands of Hope" Leavitt founded for the protection of children.
Recognition
In recognition of Leavitt's service, she was eventually named Honorary Life President of the WCTU, in which capacity she served for 20 years. Her stature within the movement was such that she often addressed the national convention.Death
Towards the end of her life, Leavitt fell out with WCTU leadership, and ultimately resigned from the organization. Looking back, she told interviewers that her greatest accomplishment was not her temperance efforts, but instead building fellowship among the world's women. "The greatest value of my years of work lies in the impetus the labors of a woman have given to development among women in remote places." Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt, born Mary Clement, died at her home at 18 Huntington Avenue in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1912. The fate of the New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
schoolteacher's ex-husband, Thomas H. Leavitt, a Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
native and Boston real estate broker whom she married in 1857, was not chronicled – nor whether he enjoyed alcoholic beverages. Mrs. Leavitt's daughter Amy, educated at her mother's "Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt's Private School in Boston", later became a translator and musician after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...
. Mary Leavitt and Thomas H. Leavitt had two other daughters, Agnes and Edith.