Background on Levi Newton
Levi Newton, a small farmer from the Quabbin region, was born on October 21, 1830, the son of William and Betsy Newton, and spent nearly all of his life within a few miles radius of the adjoining towns of Dana and New Salem, Massachusetts.
At the age of 20, Newton was recorded in the census as living with his family just over the border in Marlboro, Vt., and it was in Vermont that he married his first with, Josephine Victoria Whitaker, on Nov. 24, 1859. Shortly after their marriage, the couple returned to Massachusetts and settled first in the Quabbin town of Greenwich, and then in nearby New Salem, raising a family that came to include two sons, Marshall Delevan Newton (1862-1930) and William Levi Newton (1871-1952), and a daughter, Martha Clara Newton(1865-1884).
Widowed when Josephine died three months after the birth of their third child, Newton went on to marry Persis Pratt on March 30, 1873, and following Persis' death on Feb. 19, 1890, he tried his luck for a third time, marrying Estella J. Bullock in a Methodist service on July 26, 1891. Barely six years later, on April 2, 1897, Estella died.
Although Newton lived in North Dana for several years beginning in about 1886, he was a resident of New Salem when he died in June 1919.
