Fort Levett

Fort Levett was a former U.S. Army fort built on Cushing Island, Maine beginning in 1898. Located in Cumberland County, Maine, in Casco Bay near Portland, Maine, the fort was heavily fortified with guns for coastal defense. Conceived under the Endicott Program in 1885 and begun in the wake of the Spanish–American War, Fort Levett was manned during both World Wars. The fort's name is sometimes mis-spelled as "Fort Leavitt".

History

Fort Levett was built on 140 acres (0.57 km²) of Cushing Island, and the coast artillery fortification was visited by several Secretaries of War, including Jacob M. Dickinson in 1909. The fort, whose call letters were FV, was part of a network of forts guarding Portland Harbor and Casco Bay under the Coast Defenses of Portland (Harbor Defenses after 1925), which included Levett, Fort Williams on Portland Head, and Fort McKinley on Great Diamond Island as well as Fort Preble. Fort Scammel and Fort Gorges, once strongly fortified and guarding the harbor entrance, were decommissioned earlier than the previous three forts, and were not modernized after the 1870s. The forts were built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, maintained by the Army's Ordnance Department, and after 1907 were manned by the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps.

Levett

Levett is an Anglo-Norman territorial surname deriving from the village of Livet-en-Ouche, now Jonquerets-de-Livet, in Eure, Normandy. Ancestors of the earliest Levett family in England, the de Livets were lords of the village of Livet, and undertenants of the de Ferrers, among the most powerful of William the Conqueror's Norman lords.

History

One branch of the de Livet family came to England during the Norman Conquest, nearly a thousand years ago, and were prominent first in Leicestershire, and later in Derbyshire,Cheshire, Ireland and Sussex, where they held many manors, including the lordship of Firle. The name Livet (first recorded as Lived in the 11th century), of Gaulish etymology, may mean a "place where yew-trees grow". Like most Normans, the family's origins are probably partly Scandinavian.

The year of the family's arrival in England is uncertain. But the family name appears in the records of William the Conqueror. The first family member in England, Roger de Livet, appears in Domesday as a tenant of the Norman magnate Henry de Ferrers. de Livet held land in Leicestershire, and was, along with Ferrers, a benefactor of Tutbury Priory. By about 1270, when the Dering Roll was crafted to display the coats of arms of 324 of England's most powerful lords, the coat of arms of Robert Livet, Knight, was among them.