Leonard Sargent (1793–1880), attorney and public official, was a native of Dorset, Vermont. He trained as a lawyer and worked briefly in Pawlet before relocating his practice to Manchester. His account of an 1819 murder case in which he was involved was used by the British novelist Wilkie Collins as the basis for his 1874 tale The Dead Alive. During his long legal career, Sargent served at various times as a postmaster, justice of the peace, state attorney, member of both houses of the Vermont legislature, probate judge and, for many years, on the council of censors. Beginning politically as a Republican, he was a Whig when he served as lieutenant governor, 1846–48. Sargent died at the home of his daughter in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (John S. Sargent and Aaron Sargent, Sargent Genealogy [1895], 69; Hiel Hollister, Pawlet for One Hundred Years [1867], 102; Leonard Sargent, The Trial, Confessions and Conviction of Jesse and Stephen Boorn, for the murder of Russell Colvin, and the return of the man supposed to have been murdered [1873]; Wilkie Collins, The Dead Alive [1874], 157; Burlington Northern Sentinel, 3 Sept. 1819; Bennington Vermont Gazette, 30 Jan. 1821, 15 Dec. 1829; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Vermont [1836], 3; New London, Ct., Morning News, 16 July 1847; Edward Conant, Vermont Historical Reader [1907], 166; Montpelier Vermont Patriot & State Gazette, 29 Sept. 1854; Journal of the Council of Censors of the State of Vermont [1862], 3, 4; Marcus D. Gilman, The Bibliography of Vermont [1897], 242).