Levi Ziegler Leiter (November 2, 1834 – June 9, 1904) was an American businessman based in Chicago. He co-founded what later became the Marshall Field & Company retail empire.
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Early life
Leiter was born to Anne (née Ziegler) and Joseph Thomas Leiter, of Leitersburg, the Washington County, Maryland town founded by his granduncle Andrew Leiter. Although some have confused Leiter's ancestry as Jewish, his family was in fact of Swiss descent; he was raised a Lutheran.
Career
As a boy, Leiter worked for a dry goods business in Springfield, Ohio. In 1853 he began working as a bookkeeper at Chicago's then-largest dry goods company, Cooley, Wadsworth & Co., where he worked alongside Marshall Field and Potter Palmer. Leiter and Field became partners in the firm, but in 1865, they sold their interest in the company to John V. Farwell and went into business, along with Palmer, as Field, Palmer, Leiter & Co.