Levett

This surname comes from the village of Livet-en-Ouche, now Jonquerets-de-Livet, in Eure, Normandy. Here the de Livets were undertenants of the de Ferrers family, among the most powerful of William the Conqueror's Norman lords. The name Livet (first recorded as Lived in the 11th century), of Gaulish etymology, may mean a "place where yew-trees grow".

The first de Livet in England, Roger, appears in Domesday as a tenant of the Norman magnate Henry de Ferrers. de Livet held land in Leicestershire, and was, along with Ferrers, a benefactor of Tutbury Priory. By about 1270, when the Dering Roll was crafted to display the coats of arms of 324 of England's most powerful lords, the coat of arms of Robert Livet, Knight, was among them. Some Levetts were early knights and Crusaders; many members of both English and French families were Knights Hospitallers, and served as courtiers.

A Levett family settled in Derbyshire was extinct by the early sixteenth century. A family of the name resident in Sussex at Warbleton and Salehurst also held the manor of Firle until it passed from family control in 1440 due to the debts of Thomas Levett, whose bankruptcy also necessitated the loss of Catsfield, East Sussex. Sussex deeds indicate instances of 'Levetts' attached to place names, indicating possession by individuals and families of that name. In 1620, John Levett, of Sedlescombe, Sussex, was forced by financial hardship to sell his half-interest in Bodiam Castle, inherited family land and property across Sussex and Kent, including at Ewhurst, Salehurst, Battle, Sussex and Hawkhurst, Kent, to Sir Thomas Dyke, for £1000; this represented the end of these Levetts as prominent landowners.

Families of the name Levett (also Levet, Lyvet, Levytt, Livett, Delivett, Levete, Leavett, Leavitt, Lovett and others) would subsequently settle in Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Worcestershire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Bedfordshire and Staffordshire.

By the mid twentieth century, only two prominent Levett families remained; that of Milford Hall, Staffordshire and that formerly of Wychnor Hall, Staffordshire (and Packington Hall). Milford Hall passed in the female line to the Haszard family, and Wychnor Park was sold by the Levetts to Lt-Col W. E. Harrison in 1913, this later becoming a country club.

The Levett-Scrivener family (descending from a daughter of the Milford Hall family) retains the ruin of Sibton Abbey, which they have made available to historical societies and researchers; the Levett-Prinseps (a branch of the Wychnor Park family) were unable to maintain Croxall Hall; it was sold in 1920 and the estate was broken up.

By 1871, although family tradition of a common ancestor of the Milford Hall and Wychnor Park Levett families was mentioned in the latter pedigree, the earliest listed ancestors of each family were, respectively, William Levett of Savernake, Wiltshire, page to King Charles I at the time of his death in 1649, and Theophilus Levett, who died 1746. Even the 1847 edition, produced at a time when Burke's publications were inclusive of vague, unproven 'family traditions' (a practice subsequently widely criticised), makes no mention of any earlier ancestors or Norman origin in either family's pedigree.

Individuals of the name of Levett (and its variants) appear in all social strata: John Levett, a guard on the London to Brighton coach, was convicted of petty theft and transported to Australia in the nineteenth century; English records reveal Levetts embroiled in bastardy cases or relegated to poorhouses. A Francis Levett was a factor living in Livorno, Italy, travelling back and forth to Constantinople for the Levant Company. He subsequently failed at British East Florida as a planter; his son Francis Jr. returned to America, where he became the first to grow Sea Island cotton.

A notable individual of the name was the unschooled Yorkshireman who, having worked as a Parisian waiter, then trained as an apothecary. Robert Levet returned to England, where he treated denizens of London's seedier neighbourhoods. Having married an apparent grifter and prostitute, Levet was taken in by the poet Samuel Johnson. While Samuel Johnson adopted one Levet as boarder, he was apologizing to another better-placed Levett who held the mortgage on Johnson's mother's home in Lichfield.

Today there are many Levetts (the spelling of the name varies) living outside England, including in South Africa, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland.

In a few cases Levetts were forced by religious belief to flee England for the colonies. Among these were tailor John Leavitt and farmer Thomas Leavitt, early English Puritan immigrants to Massachusetts and New Hampshire, respectively, whose names first appear in seventeenth-century New England records as Levet or Levett.

Individuals bearing the surname of Levett include:

• Hooton Levitt, South Yorkshire
• Catsfield Levett, East Sussex, now simply Catsfield
• Levitt Hagg, South Yorkshire
• Fort Levett, Casco Bay, Maine
• Levette Lake, British Columbia, Canada
• Levitstown (initially Lyvetiston), County Kildare, Ireland
• Leavitt, California
• Leavittsburg, Ohio
• Leavitt Island, Alaska North Slope
• Leavittstown, now Effingham, New Hampshire
• Leavitt's Hill, now Deerfield, New Hampshire
• Leavitt Peak, California
• Leavitt, Alberta, Canada
• Levetts Fields, Lichfield, Staffordshire
• Levetts Square, Lichfield, Staffordshire
• Leavitt (crater), Moon
• 5383 Leavitt, asteroid, Solar System

These places are or were associated with Levett families or individuals:

• Levett was the name given by Alfred Hitchcock to the villain in his first film, The Pleasure Garden, a 1925 silent movie
• Geoffrey Levett is the male lead character in Margery Allingham's novel, The Tiger in the Smoke (made into a 1956 British film of the same name)