Henry Leavitt Ellsworth
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Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (November 10 1791 - December 27 1858) was a U.S. administrator.
Ellsworth was born in Windsor, Connecticut, a son of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott, graduated from Yale University in 1810, and studied law at Litchfield Law School. On June 22 1813, he married Nancy Allen Goodrich, daughter of Judge Elizur Goodrich and Anne Willard, with whom he had three children. (He was later to have two subsequent wives, Marietta Mariana Bartlett and then Catherine Smith.) After studying law under Judge Gould, at Litchfield, Connecticut, he settled first at Windsor and then at Hartford, where he remained eight or ten years.
In 1832 he traveled west as Commissioner of Indian tribes in Arkansas and Oklahoma, appointed to superintend the removal of Native Americans to Oklahoma, accompanied on the expedition by noted author Washington Irving who recorded his impressions in A Tour on the Prairies.
In 1835, Ellsworth was elected mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, but served only one month. (His twin brother William Wolcott Ellsworth was Governor of Connecticut from 1838-1842.) He then served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office between 1835 and 1845. In this role, he found one third of the floor-space in his office occupied by over 60 models of inventions; he moved them to a separate room. He also found that no list of patent applicants had ever been drawn up, which deficiency he corrected. (From Ellworth's exposure to the West and knowledge of inventions, he prophesied late in life that the lands of the West would be cultivated by means of steam plows. This prophecy was introduced in the probate of his will in an attempt to prove that he was of unsound mind.)
Following his stint in the Patent Office, Ellsworth settled in Lafayette, Indiana, acting as an agent for purchase and settlement of public land, but in 1857 returned to Connecticut. Ellsworth later served as president of the Aetna Insurance Company.
Ellsworth died, aged 67, on December 27 1858 in Fair Haven, Connecticut. His papers are collected in the Yale University Library.
