Dickson H. and Marjorie B. Leavens papers

DICKSON HAMMOND LEAVENS, 1887-1955

Dickson Hammond Leavens, missionary, teacher, and economist, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on March 16, 1887. After preparing at the Norwich Free Academy, Leavens entered Yale College as a member of the Class of 1909. Upon graduation he received a three-year appointment to teach English, history, and geography at the Yale Mission College in Changsha, China. Leavens returned to the United States in 1912 and studied mathematics at Columbia University and the Yale Graduate School, where he received his M.A. in 1915. Later the same year he married Marjorie Lathrop Browning of Norwich, Connecticut, and returned to Changsha, where he had received a joint appointment as treasurer and faculty member of the Yale Mission College. In the spring of 1921 he took a four-month leave of absence to aid in famine relief work at Paotingfu near Peking and in June returned to the United States on leave. During the summer of 1922 Leavens once again returned to Changsha and resumed his duties at the college. When the revolution of 1927 forced the closing of the Yale-in-China facilities in Changsha, most of the staff returned to the United States. Leavens, however, stayed on in Shanghai as the representative of the Yale-in-China Association's trustees. He was able to reenter Changsha in the spring of 1928 and make arrangements for the resumption of work with a Chinese staff.

After his return to the United States in late 1928, Leavens was employed as a research assistant at the Harvard Business School. He began a systematic study of the economic aspects of silver, a subject in which he had become interested while serving as treasurer of the Yale Mission College. In 1931 his first book, Problems in Business Statistics, was published. A second book, Silver Money, was published in 1939. From 1939 to 1936 Leavens served as a trustee of the Yale-in-China Association and during 1934 was employed as a Special Agent for the United States Treasury Department in China and India. In 1936 he was appointed a research associate by the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. During the same year he became the editor of the Econometric Society's journal, Econometrica, which he edited until his retirement in 1948.

Dickson Leavens died on December 3, 1955, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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MARJORIE BROWNING LEAVENS, 1888-1977

Marjorie Browning Leavens was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on October 30, 1888. She graduated from Smith College in 1910 and later earned a masters degree in astronomy at Radcliffe College. In 1915 she married Dickson H. Leavens and accompanied him to Changsha, Hunan, where he had been appointed a member of the Yale Mission College faculty. While living in Changsha, Marjorie Leavens taught mathematics and astronomy at the Yale Mission College and encouraged the women of the city to develop a small cross-stitch embroidery industry. Returning to the United States in 1928, she lived with her husband in Cambridge, Chicago, and Colorado Springs, where she continued her interest in China by lecturing on her experiences in Hunan. She died on July 22, 1977, in Carmel, California.