Talk:Levett

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Levetts in history[edit]

The Levett family in England produced a Lord Mayor of London who owned Kew Palace (Richard Levett), an Oxford University dean and Dean of Bristol (William Levett), a courtier to King Charles I who accompanied the King on the day of his execution and later became embroiled in controversy over whether the King had penned the Eikon Basilica (another William Levett), an English tobacco merchant who married the sister of Sir John Holt, the Lord Chief Justice (Francis Levett), a British planter who became the first to plant Sea Island cotton in America (another Francis Levett), several members of Parliament (including John and Theophilus Levett), the first lords of Firle, Sussex, as well other Levett family members who married into the families of Byron, Darwin, Anson, as well as the Earls of Shaftesbury, Denbigh and others. The family also gave its name to two English towns, Hooton Levitt (or Levett) in Yorkshire, as well as Catsfield Levett, Sussex, now simply Catsfield. This family also produced an eminent medical doctor at Charterhouse who wrote a pioneering tract on smallpox (Dr. Henry Levett), a Royal Air Force pilot who later aided Israel in its establishment as a state (Gordon Levett), an early Sussex vicar who established the iron foundry industry in Sussex (William Levett of Buxted), and an early friend and correspondent of Samuel Johnson (Lichfield town clerk Theophilus Levett).

Then the page would make a very nice disambiguation page- why not turn it into one and remove the proposed deletion notice? J Milburn (talk) 18:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion and your help. Great idea. MarmadukePercy (talk) 18:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Village Descendants[edit]

Hi MarmadukePercy,
Perhaps the beginning of this page should be changed a bit. The sentence "Ancestors of the Levetts, the de Livet family were lords of the village of Livet" seems to indicate that all of this surname were descended from this particular de Livet family who were lords of Livet. However, anyone else living in (and/or moving away from) this village would also be "from Livet" or "De Livet". This could be why there are Leavitt families that have been proven to carry no family relationship between them (currently, Y-DNA testing has found three distinct lines with this surname). I suppose some individuals of this surname could also be descended from the early townspeople of Yorkshire's Hooton Levitt, if any picked up "de (Hooton) Levitt" when surnames were forming. This change in wording may help those newcomers to genealogy who come across this write-up (Wikipedia pages are among the top hits of any search results), and think that they are all descended from this one particular Norman family.
Thanks, The27thmaine (talk) 00:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the message. There are several possibilities. It's clear that Leavitt, the corruption of the English name Levett (as first appeared in New England records), may come from several sources. The names of Thomas of Hampton and John of Hingham both clearly have non-English origins. How did they come to have these names? One possibility is that -- as DNA companies routinely discover -- the results have been compromised by children born of extramarital relationships. The second possibility is that the names have different roots. It's unlikely that Englishmen would have derived their name from Hooton Levitt or Catsfield Levett (although it's not out of the question). What's more likely, it seems to me, is that the ancestor of John or Thomas came from another place in France (likely Normandy) where the name Livet figured. (This could have happened in the years following the Norman Conquest.) For instance, there are Livet-sur-Authou, St. Germain-de-Livet, St. Michel-de-Livet and others which apparently derive from ownership of the eponymous early Normandy family. It's conceivable that one of these two men trace their ancestry to these villages, and that their ancestor emigrated to England later. During the Norman Conquest, anyone with the name 'Livet' took it in a territorial sense: the family owned the village. But this is the advantage of DNA research: it enables us to ferret out these nuances, giving a closer approximation of the surname's origin. Wikipedia is a clearinghouse of history and genealogy. By compiling families' histories, we coax out those inclined to donate blood (the ultimate arbiter) to get at the truth. By posting accounts of long-dead ancestors, we realize we're all separated by only six degrees. Thanks for your message and let's hope we're getting at solving this riddle. In the meantime, I agree: this entry needs a qualifier. I'll get to work. Best regards,MarmadukePercy (talk) 01:37, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
@MarmadukePercy being a leavitt can be dull sometimes 174.240.67.36 (talk) 01:55, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]


jewish roots[edit]

the levett family are of jewish descent and my theory from the information that i have compiled is that the family name is french-jewish my reason being are that the members of older generations are jewish and there is a rumour in the family that the name levett comes from the word levi. furthermore i would like to add that there is another legend that many family members died in WWII after they were captured rarher than just being kept in captivity due to there name. another interesting fact is the fact that the facial features of some family members are similar to those of jewish people. so in conclusion i believe that further down the line before the existance of the french village there were some jewish family connections. i also firmly believe that the family are of viking decent as a skeleton in york museum which has been reconstructed looks almost identical to a member of the family. there are also many jewish people with names like levet, levit, levett and other variations on the name but not many family members know of their jewish background as it has been kept in secracy as certain members do not wish to remonice the dark events that sadly affected the family. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.135.109.70 (talk) 17:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Jews in England have had a long history, dating probably from Roman times and certainly since the time of the Norman Conquest. There are known to have been Jewish merchants in Rouen who came to England in the wake of William the Conqueror's victory. The Jewish name derives, as I understand it, from 'son of Levi,' as you suggest. No doubt they thrived for almost two centuries, until the Jews were expelled from England in the thirteenth century in a frenzy of anti-Semitism, foreshadowed by earlier ugly incidents. (French Jews faced similar treatment during the medieval era in France.) From that time until the Cromwell victory in the seventeenth century, there was virtually no Jewish presence in England, save for isolated individuals practicing their faith in secret. (See History of the Jews in England.) There was also a well-documented Anglo-Norman family, whose name derived from the village of Livet in Normandy, who were Christian, and who from all evidence went on several Crusades and participated in several Christian orders such as the Knights Hospitallers. This family was not Jewish but Anglo-Norman. There are two distinct families here, and perhaps the Levit/Levitt Jewish family of England deserves its own page. I have created an entry on the Levett page for Gordon Levett, a English Gentile who was the highest ranking non-Jew in the Israeli Air Force, and whom the Israelis at first suspected was an English spy. (See his entry.) Regards, MarmadukePercy (talk) 06:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reflist display[edit]

My mistake. Nothing to enter here. Was merely confused while seeking to make a minor edit by the length of the article's aberrantly long lede, which needs to be shortened, with content integrated into the body of the article, and the inclusion of multiple image files under the Reflist heading. Wikiuser100 (talk) 11:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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