Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt was born in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. She was the daughter of the Rev. Joshua and Eliza (Harvey) Clement. Her father was a Baptist clergyman who was generally called "Father" Clement because of his occupation, and also because of his marked resemblance to George Washington.
Greenleaf Clement attended the district schools of Hopkinton and Thetford (Vermont) Academy. Later she entered the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham and graduated from it in 1851.
After Thetford Academy Mary taught in country schools in Vermont and New Hampshire. Later she was a teacher in the Boylston Grammar School in Boston till 1857. In 1867 she established a private school of her own in Boston which she conducted till 1881. She was interested in the meetings held by Moody and Sankey in Boston in 1876, and her interest in religious and temperance work made her active in the organization of the Massachusetts W. C. T. U. In 1883 she became a traveling representative of the national W. C. T. U. and undertook a campaign of education and organization under its auspices.
She spent nine months in the United States and then sailed to the Sandwich Islands, after which she visited Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, India, many parts of Africa (including the island of Madagascar, which she crossed escorted only by sixteen native bearers), the British Isles, and much of the continent of Europe. She did not return till 1891, and many times she spoke as often as three times a day, employing something like 229 interpreters in forty-seven different languages. The amount of money she expended was extremely small, and all but sixteen hundred dollars of it was "collected from those for whom she labored, " that is, from offerings at the meetings she addressed.
Soon after her return from her first trip, she started on another journey through South America, and it was attended with equal success. Her activities led to the organization of the World's W. C. T. U. and it, at a meeting in Boston in 1891, made her an honorary officer for life. She died in Boston.
Her publications include only a few tracts on the liquor question, so her distinction is due to her powers as a speaker and organizer. She is credited with forming eighty-six branches of the W. C. T. U. , twenty-four temperance societies, and twenty-three branches of the White Cross in her travels; but what is perhaps more significant is the fact that the motto of the W. C. T. U. was changed from "For God and Home and Native Land" to "For God and Home and Every Land" largely because of her work, thus giving a wider outlook to a movement that was at most national, if not sectarian in its inception.
Member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
In 1857 Mary Greenleaf married Thomas H. Leavitt of Greenfield, Massachussets, in Thetford, Vermont. She had three daughters.
