Male

November 10, 1791

December 28, 1858

Windsor, CT

Windsor, CT
Hartford, CT
Lafayette, IN

Nancy Goodrich Ellsworth (June 2, 1813)
Marietta Barlett Ellsworth (1852)
Catharine Smith Ellsworth (1857)

Henry Leavitt Ellsworth was the son of Chief Justice Oliver and Abigail (Wolcott) Ellsworth. He was also the twin brother of William Wolcott Ellsworth who attended the Litchfield Law School in 1811. Ellsworth was prepared for college by Nathan Johnson. After attending the Litchfield Law School, he married Nancy Allen Goodrich of New Haven, CT, the only daughter of Hon. Elizur Goodrich. They had two sons and one daughter.

Ellsworth and his wife first settled in Windsor, CT but after a few years moved to Hartford, CT where he began a successful and varied career. Ellsworth worked as a lawyer and also pursued agricultural interests. From 1819 to 1821 he acted as President of the Aetna Insurance Company and was also active in real estate. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson appointed ...him the Commissioner to and Superintendent of Indian Settlement. This commission involved the transplantation and resettlement of Native Americans from their homes to the south and west and Arkansas following the passage of the Indian Removal Act. While in this position, Ellsworth traveled extensively in this region. On one of those tours in eastern Oklahoma, he was accompanied by the author Washington Irving.

In April 1835, Ellsworth was elected Mayor of Hartford, but resigned on June 15, 1835. He was then appointed by President Andrew Jackson as the first U.S. Commissioner of Patents, and consequently he presented a series of reports to Congress. His office was also very involved with the development and distribution of seeds and made the first government investments in agriculture. He was also influential in getting a government appropriation of $30,000 for his friend Samuel B. Morse to see the practicality of the telegraph.

On April 30, 1845, Ellsworth resigned as Commissioner of Patents. He then moved to Lafayette, IN as the agent for the purchase and settlement of public lands, eventually becoming the largest landholder himself. Reportedly, Ellsworth was the first to use a mowing machine on the prairies. In 1847, his wife Nancy died from a fractured leg at the age of fifty-four. Ellsworth remarried twice after that. In 1858, Ellsworth returned to CT in ill health and died in Fair Haven, CT.
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His work, "A Tour to New Connecticut in 1811: the narrative of Henry Leavitt Ellsworth," was published in 1985.

1811

Studied with Nathan Johnson in Windsor, CT in preparation for college and then graduated from Yale College in 1810.

Lawyer; Agriculture; Insurance; Real Estate; Political Office

1812 in Litchfield County Court

Commissioner of Indian Settlement 1832-1835
Commissioner of Patents 1835-1845

Mayor (Hartford, CT) 1835

Baldwin, Roger Sherman. "Notes on law taken from the lectures of the Honble. Tapping Reeve and James Gould, esquire … at the Litchfield Law School, 1812-1813." Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Univeristy.; Bond, William Key. "Lecture"

Litchfield County Bar Association Records, 1812, Litchfield Historical Society, Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of College History, Vol. 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912.