Frank Leverett was probably the most famous of the Leveretts, a geologist who was in the first Who's Who in around 1900, and then set the record for being in more consecutive Who's Whos than anyone else; he was in that Who's Who until well into the 1920's. That's because a geologist rock star doesn't turn up every year, but he wss solid, deserving, and as famous as he always was every time they went looking for a geologist. He had walked 100,000 miles of the midwest looking for evidence of where the glaciers had receded because he had figured out, based on surface features, what could predictably be found beneath. His methods were particularly useful to the oil boys but that story I will save for later. He at one point went to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition and showed off through his exhibit "Soils of Illinois" everything he had found up and down the lake, and out this way, toward the Mississippi Valley. Though he had grown up in the Iowa Territory, born during the Civil War, his work convinced him that during the Ice Age the Mississippi actually flowed down to the west, down through Columbus Junction Iowa, so his little cabin in Denmark down by Burlington would have actually been to the east of it. Today I live in that territory, more or less, east of the river.
He's a family hero because toward the end of his life he started collecting "data" about the family, and investigating the tenuous connection between the western Leveretts and the original Puritan ones from Massachusetts colony fame. He even went back there, found an old lady living in a house full of antiques in Boston, and inquired about the line, carefully writing down everything he found. When he got to Harvard a friend gave him his edited chapter on The Great Leverett, about John Leverett the President of Harvard in the early 1700s. With this came a general overview of how the Leveretts could have been related and who we really had going back as far as we could. But in this process he became interested in longevity. How long had everyone lived? Was it a genetic trait or what? What kind of averages were out there? Where would he fit in, i.e. how long would he live?
His birthday was on March 10, and so was his second wife's, and together they made a habit of celebrating, every year, having made it to another one.
This year I made it to Chicago, picked up one son near Lakeshore Drive, and went to see two others, also on Lakeshore Drive, to celebrate their grandpa's turning 100 on Mar. 10. A longevity party. This was my ex-wife's father, not mine; in fact longevity is not really a trait of our line. We, like Frank, can expect to make it to about 90 if we're lucky. But what's luck? To me it was to be able to drive on Lakeshore Drive, see the big city at its best, be in a room with three sons, and make it home all in one piece. Here's to Frank Leverett, great map-maker of the midwest. Picture is Frank and Charles, his brother, in Iowa, around the Civil War.
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