Editing Dudley Leavitt (section)

=== Early Life in Canada and Eastern U.S.  ===

Dudley Leavitt was born in 1830 to Jeremiah Leavitt (1796-1846) and Sarah Sturdevant (1797-1878) in Harley, Lower Quebec, Canada. His father’s family was from Rockingham, New Hampshire; his mother, from Plymouth, Massachusetts. They had long been New Englanders before their foray into Canada. In the 1830s, the family heard of Joseph Smith's message of a restored gospel. Dudley and several other family members were baptized in 1838. In the 1840s, they settled in Nauvoo, the central Mormon gathering place in western Illinois.