USA > Maine > Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume I > Part 93
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STATE OF MAINE.
J. Boothby and resides in Bangor. 4. Lillian Etta, mentioned below. 5. Ada May, married, September 1, 1868, Charles E. Marston, and lives in Augusta.
(IV) Lillian Etta, fourth child of William (2) and Fanny (Hodgdon) McNelly, was born in Clinton, April 19, 1865, and married, in Waterville, April 4, 1888, Charles Addison Bean. (See Bean VIII.)
The progenitor of the Hodg-
HODGDON dons of Maine was the carli- est immigrant of the name in New England, and was in Massachusetts be- fore the Pilgrims of the "Mayflower" had seen fourteen years in the wilderness of Mas- sachusetts. Besides the form given above, the name appears in old records as Hodsden, Hodsdin, Hodsdon, and in the "Colonial Rec- ords" as Hudson.
(I) Nicholas Hodgdon was of Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1635. The next year the selectmen granted him a home lot in the center of the town, and still later he was granted meadow lands elsewhere. He was made a freeman March 9, 1637. About 1650 he, with others, bought large tracts of land in what is now Newton. About 1656 he sold his lands in both towns and moved to what is now Kittery, Maine, where he was granted land by the town October 15. 1656, but he was already living there, as the grant was for a "lott of land above his house." At vari- ous subsequent times he also received grants. At this time he lived at Quamphegan; in later life he lived on a farm on the easterly side of the Piscataquis river, in the extreme southerly part of what is now South Ber- wick. He was a prosperous farmer. The family for several generations lived the regu- lar life of our sturdy ancestors, but the pub- lic records give only meager facts, and the existing family records throw little light on the carlier generations of the family. Nicho- las married (first) in Hingham, about 1639, Esther Wines, who died in 1647. He mar- ried (second) in 1649, Elizabeth, widow of John Needham. The dates of the birth of Nicholas and of his wifes' deaths are unknown. Nicholas and Elizabeth are probably buried in the family graveyard on the farm in Kit- tery. The children of Nicholas, order and dates of birth not known, were: Esther, Me- hitable, Jeremiah, Israel, Elizabeth, Benoni (all baptized in Hingham), Sarah (born about 1650), Timothy, John, Joseph and Lucy.
(II) Jeremiah, third child of Nicholas and Esther (Wines) Hodgdon, was baptized in
Ilingham, Massachusetts, September 6, 1643, moved with his father to Kittery, and there received a grant of land in 1666. In this latter year he was also taxed in Dover. He moved to Portsmouth, and finally to what is now Newcastle, New Hampshire, where he died before 1716. He married, about 1666, Anne Thwaits, daughter of Alexander and Anne Thwaits. After the death of her hus- band she removed to Boston, where in 1719 she joined the Brattle Street Church. The date of her death is unknown. The children of this union, dates of birth unknown, were: Alexander, `John, Elizabeth, Nathaniel and Rebecca.
(III) Alexander, eldest child of Jeremiah and Anne (Thwaits) Hodgdon, was born probably in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was a member of the church and evidently a man of intelligence and high standing in that organization, as he was one of a com- mittee to obtain the services of a minister in Newington. In 1753 he sold all his lands in Newington to his son Alexander for £1,600, and we find no further record of him in that town or elsewhere. He married Jane Shack- ford, of Dover, New Hampshire, and they had six or more children, dates of birth un- known, whose names are: Alexander, Joseph, John, Benjamin, Anna and Elizabeth.
(IV) Joseph, second son of Alexander and Jane (Shackford) Hodgdon, was probably a native of Newington, New Hampshire. He resided in Newington, where six children were baptized, and moved from there, about 1737, to Scarborough, Maine. His occupation, like that of his ancestors and the great majority of American colonists, was farming. His wife Patience, whose family name is unknown, bore him six children: Patience (died young), Alexander, John, Patience, Lydia and Abi- gail.
(V) John, third child of Joseph and Pa- tience Hodgdon, was baptized in Scarborough, July 10, 1727, and was a lifelong farmer there. He married, in Scarborough, Decem- ber 12, 1754, Mary McKenney, daughter of Robert and Margaret (Jimmerson) McKen- ney, who was the mother of his seven chil- dren, whose names are as follows: William, James, John, Jonathan, Jeremy, Hannah and Mary.
(VI) John (2), third son of John (1) and Mary (McKenney) Hodgdon, was baptized April 22, 1759, in Scarborough, where he spent his life farming. He married, in Scar- borough, April 18, 1776, Katherine Harmon, daughter of William and Esther (Hoit) Har-
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mon. They had William, John, Olive, Jo- seph, Jane, and other children.
(VII) William, eldest child of John (2) and Katherine (Harmon) Hodgdon, was born in Scarborough, November 12, 1777, and died in Milo, October, 1849. He was a farmer in Scarborough until about 1800, when he moved to Saco. He resided there until some years after the death of his first wife, when he removed to Milo, where his last years were spent. He married (first) in Scarbor- ough, December 23, 1798, Mercy, daughter of Nathaniel and Anna (Gould) Seavey. She was born in Scarborough, August 10, 1777, and died in Saco, August 16, 1817. Some years after the death of his first wife he mar- ried, in Milo, Mrs. Sands, of Sebec. His children, all by first wife, were: John, Thom- as Seavey, Ebenezer, Abraham, Samuel and Sally.
(VIII) Thomas Seavey, second child of William and Mercy (Seavey) Hodgdon, was born in Saco, July 2, 1801, and died in Water- ville, August 18, 1886. He was a farmer and shoemaker. He lived in Saco until he was twenty-seven years old, and then removed to Lisbon, 1828; to Topsham, 1829; to Clinton, 1831 ; and resided in the last-named place the greater part of his life. He married, in Scar- borough, February 17, 1821, Lydia Libby, who was born April 3, 1806, and died Au- gust 7, 1864, daughter of David and Eliza- beth (McKenney) Libby. Their nine chil- .dren were: David, Elbridge G., Frederick, Fanny, George and Aaron (twins), Rufus, Caroline A. and Emma.
(IX) Fanny, fourth child of Thomas S. and Lydia (Libby) Hodgdon, was born in Saco, July 27, 1830, and married in Clinton, October 27, 1851, William (2) McNelly. (See McNelly III.)
This name is frequently found LITTLE in Great Britain, especially in Scotland, and is common in the North of Ireland. The variations in spelling in early documents are numerous and remark- able. At least nine forms were well estab- lished prior to 1700: Littell, Littel, Litel, Lvtel, Lytell, Lyttelle. Little. Lytle and Lyttle. The patronymic Lytle is rather unusual in America, but it at once recalls the gifted Will- iam Haines Lytle, whose life was sacrificed for his county in 1863. His famous poem be- ginning :
"I am dying, Egypt, dying,
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,"
is said to have been written on the eve of the
battle which caused his death. Perhaps the earliest mention of the name in England is that of William Little, who was born in 1136, at Bridlington, in Yorkshire. He was a monk of Newborough Abbey, and wrote a history of England from the period from 1066 to 1197. Some centuries later we read that El- len, daughter of Sir Thomas Little, of Berk- shire, married Edward Bacon, of Shrubland Hall, county Suffolk, son of Sir Nicholas Ba- con, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Eng- land, and brother to the famous Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans. In modern times we find that a family by the name of Little has its seat at Llanvair Grange, county Monmouth, and the vice-chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster were recently held by George Little, K. C.
In Scotland the name is associated with the renowned patriot, Sir William Wallace, who had a nephew named Edward Little. In 1398 Nicol Little took part in one of the numerous Border wars between the English and the Scotch. Two families of the name have held more or less extended estates, one at Meikle- dale and Langholme in Dumfrieshire, and the other at Liberton, near Edinburgh. At some period between 1698 and 1731 William Little, of Liberton, a gentleman of ancient family, which had been in possession of the barony of Liberton for over a hundred years preceding, married Helen, daughter of Sir Alexander Gilmour, of Craigmillar, in the same county. There is some reason for sup- posing that George Little. the American an- cestor with whom the following line begins, may have been connected with the Littles of Liberton. At all events, a coat-of-arms which has been found handed down in several branches of the American family is practically the same as that of the Littles of Liberton. This escutcheon consists of a field or, with a saltire of Saint Andrew's cross, engrailed sable; crest, a wolf's head ; motto: "Magnum in parvo"-Great in little. This motto sug- gests the origin of the name, which is iden- tical with that of the surname Petit in France and Elein in Germany. It may be mentioned that the family does not appear to retain the personal characteristic of the founder of the house, for many of the modern Littles are of unusual length and more than average width.
There were several Littles among the early settlers of this country. First of them was Thomas Little, who landed at Plymouth, Mas- sachusetts, in 1630, married Ann Warren, and died at Marshfield in 1671. Probably seven thousand descendants can trace their origin to
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STATE OF MAINE.
Thomas Little; this line is particularly dis- tinguished by the number of its clergymen. Richard Little, of New Haven, Connecticut, was a freeman in 1670 and a proprietor in 1685. George Little, of Newbury, Massachu- setts, from whom the following line is de- scended, had sixty-five hundred descendants in 1880, of whom fifteen hundred lived in Mas- sachusetts, and the same number in New Hampshire; seven hundred and fifty belonged to Maine, and five hundred to Vermont; the remainder were scattered all over this country and Canada. Until the beginning of the nine- teenth century scarcely a member of the fam- ily could be found beyond the limits of the four states previously mentioned. Three towns in the Union, including Littleton, New Hamp- shire, have been named after founders be- longing to this branch of Littles. Five col- lege presidents can trace their ancestry to George Little; and his posterity, as a whole, can boast of a record whose worth compares favorably with its length. Few names in America are more ancient and few have been more creditably borne by a multitudinous off- spring.
(I) George Little, who came to Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640, is said, according to established tradition, to have resided upon Unicorn Street, near London Bridge, England. His parentage has never been traced, though the parish records of St. Olive's, Southwark, and of the neighboring St. Sav- iour's, show that several families of the name lived in that region during the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. There is a tradition that George Little had a brother Thomas, who was an officer in Cromwell's navy, and gave George a deed to lands at Barbadoes in the West Indies, which was afterward stolen from him in Newbury. George Little seems to have been distinguished by that "hankering for mud," which, according to Lowell, is one of the marked characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race. His first purchase of land occurred in 1650, when he bought a freehold right in New- bury; and from that time on he bought in large or small parcels, as occasion offered, till he owned some of the best land in town. He acquired a title to lands in the Quinebaug country in Connecticut, and in 1669 received a patent for eighty acres in Woodbridge, New Jersey. In July, 1668, he petitioned Sir Ed- mund Andros, then governor for New Eng- land, for confirmation of his title to four hun- dred acres of land "on the north side of Swan Pond westward from the Saco River." George
Little served several times upon juries at Ips- wich and Salem, but as far as is known held no public offices, though he was appraiser and executor of several estates, which would in- clicate a reputation for integrity and good judgment. In the prolonged ecclesiastical dis- pute which divided the church at Newbury for so many years he was on the side of the pas- tor, Rev. Mr. Parker, but soon after the settle- ment of difficulties he, with his wife, joined the First Baptist church in Boston, and in 1682 they became members of a small church of the same denomination in Newbury. It is said that Mr. Little was a tailor by trade, but it is probable that he devoted most of his time in America to farming. He was a man of remarkably strong physique, and it is said that he could carry a plough on his shoulder from his home to his farm on Turkey Hill- over three miles away. He was exceedingly well versed in Scripture, being able to give the book and chapter of any text that might be quoted. The house which he built in 1679 and occupied till his death, about fourteen years later, stood for nearly two centuries, or until its removal in 1851. The exact date of his death is not known, but it occurred some time between March 15, 1693, and No- vember 27, 1694. He was buried in the grave- yard adjoining the first church, but all traces were lost when a new edifice was erected near the spot not many years after his death.
George Little married (first) Alice Poor, who sailed for New England in the "Bevis," in May, 1638. The party, which included her younger brothers Samuel and Daniel, em- barked from Southampton under the care of Mr. Stephen Dummer. It is thought that the Poors were natives of Wiltshire. The motto on their coat-of-arms reads: "Pauper non in Spe"-Poor not in Hope. Alice ( Poor) Little died December 1, 1680, aged sixty-two years. Judge Sewall speaks in his diary of calling upon Goodman and Goodwife Little during one of his visits to Newbury, and says that she "lived in sore pain for many years before her death." Five children were born to George and Alice (Poor) Little, but two of whom survived their father. The children were : Sarah, born May 8, 1652, died Novem- ber 19 that vear; Joseph, September 22, 1653, died September 6, 1740; John, July 28, 1655, died July 20, 1672 ; Moses, whose sketch fol- lows; and Sarah, November 24, 1661, died after 1718. July 19, 1681, George Little mar- ried (second) Eleanor, widow of Thomas Bar- nard, of Amesbury, who survived him, dying November 27, 1694.
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STATE OF MAINE.
(II) Moses, third and youngest son of George and Alice (Poor) Little, was born March II, 1657, probably at the paternal home in Newbury, Massachusetts, where he lived till his death, March 8, 1691. He served in King Philip's war, and was town collector and en- gaged in the settlement of estates. He died of smallpox, and it is said that the physician, while in a state of intoxication, administered a prescription which hastened if it did not cause his death. As illustrating the gross medical ignorance of the time, it may be men- tioned that the patient, during his last illness, was kept in a room so heated that one's hand could not be borne upon the wall. The fact that our ancestors survived such treatment shows that they must have been made of stern stuff. The estate of "Mosis littel" (thus his signature has come down to us), was ap- praised at one thousand sixty-five pounds, a very large sum to have been accumulated at that period by so young a man. He was evi- dently rich in flocks and herds, for no less than forty-three cows, oxen and young cattle are mentioned, besides eighty sheep, eight swine and four horses. The house seems to have been well stocked with all needful articles, and among the domestic utensils mentioned are "smoothingers." Could they have been flat- irons? About 1679 Moses Little married Ly- dia, daughter of Tristam and Judith (Som- erby) (Greenleaf) Coffin, born April 22, 1662. They had children: John, born January 8, 1680; died unmarried, March 25, 1753; Tris- tam, December 9, 1681, died November II. 1765; Sarah, April 28, 1664, died December IO, I710: Mary, January 13, 1686, died in June, 1761 ; Elizabeth, May 25, 1688, married Anthony Morse; and Moses, whose sketch fol- lows. On March 18, 1695, four years after «the death of her first husband, Mrs. Lydia ( Coffin) Little married (second) John Pike, by whom she had five daughters and one son. (III) Moses (2), youngest child of Moses (I) and Lydia (Coffin) Little, was born Feb- ruary 26, 1691, at Newbury, Massachusetts. He lived at the old homestead till about 1730, when he bought the Turkey Hill farm of his uncle Joseph, where he remained till his death, October 17, 1780, in the ninetieth year of his age. The house where he spent the last fifty years of his life was a big square dwelling with a chimney in the middle, an excellent type of a dignified old farm mansion. It was built before 1700, and taken down in 1859. The farm still continues in the possession of his descendants. According to the epitaphs in the Upper burying ground on the Plains
at Newbury, Moses Little "was temperate in all things, industrious, hospitable yet frugal, a kind husband and tender father, a good neighbor, a good citizen, and while living justly sustained the first of characters-an honest man." Of his consort the stone says : "She truly answered ye wise man's character of a Virtuous Woman; Lived beloved and died lamented, and hath left her friends a Good hope that at the Resurrection this Dust shall spring to light with sweet surprise, and in her Savior's image rise."
On February 12, 1716, Moses (2) Little married Sarah, daughter of Sergeant Stephen and Deborah (Plumer) Jaques, born Septem- ber 23, 1697, died in November, 1763. Chil- dren : Lydia, born August 25, 1717; Stephen, May 19, 1719; John, November 16, 1721; Moses, May 8, 1724; Joseph, May 29, 1726; Sarah, February 17, 1728; Joseph, April 21, 1730; Benjamin, November 4, 1732; Sarah, April 8, 1735 : Mary. October 25, 1737; Paul, April 1, 1740; Elizabeth, October 16, 1742. All of these children except three, the first Joseph, the first Sarah and Elizabeth, lived to mature years and reared families. The sec- ond Sarah married William Pottle, who lived at Stratham, New Hampshire, and Minot, Maine; she brought up a family of ten chil- dren and lived to be ninety-five years of age.
(IV) Moses (3), third son of Moses (2) and Sarah (Jaques) Little, was born May 8, 1724, at Newbury, Massachusetts. He was a man of indomitable energy and great force of character, and if his health had not become seriously impaired during the last years of his life, which closed May 27, 1798, at the age of seventy-five, it is probable that even greater honors and success would have fallen to his lot. He seems to have had the same desire to become a land owner that characterized his great-grandfather, the original immigrant ; and his position as surveyor of the King's Wood, which he held for several years, gave him an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with the value of such property. About 1750, in company with others, he obtained from Governor Benning Wentworth a large grant of the unoccupied crown lands lying within the present limits of Vermont. In 1765, acting as agent for the proprietors of Bakerstown, he succeeded in obtaining for them from the gen- eral court of Massachusetts, a township of land in Maine in exchange for one previously granted and found to be within the borders of New Hampshire. By purchasing the rights of the original proprietors, Colonel Moses Lit- tle and his son Josiah eventually became own-
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STATE OF MAINE.
ers of a greater part of the grant, which com- prised the present towns of Poland, Minot and a portion of Auburn. In 1768 a still larger tract on the eastern side of Androscoggin was granted to him and Colonel Bagley, by the Pejepscot Company, on condition that they would build roads and settle fifty families there before June 1, 1774. These conditions were not fully met ; consequently the full amount of land was not received. The town of Leeds, Maine, was first called Littleborough in his honor ; and the town of Littleton, in New Hampshire, permanently preserves his name. It was in 1769 that he began buying land in northern New Hampshire, and he afterwards largely increased his holdings in that region.
Moses (3) Little rendered important mili- tary service during two wars, ranking as cap- tain during the French and Indian war, and as colonel during the revolution. In 1758 he was in command of the Newbury soldiers in the expedition against Louisburg, proving him- self an able officer, and gaining the devotion of his men. When the revolution broke out he was over fifty years of age, but no youth in his teens responded more quickly. It is said that the news of the Concord fight reached Turkey Hill at midnight. and by six the next morning Moses Little was on the road at the head of his company. He marched to the American headquarters at Cambridge, and was placed in command of the regiment raised from the northern part of Essex county, which contained four hundred and fifty-six men by the middle of June. At the battle of Bunker Hill he led three of his companies across Charlestown Neck under a severe fire from the British batteries and ships of war, reached the scene of action before the first charge of the enemy, and was present throughout the entire engagement. His men were posted in different places, a part at the redoubt, a part at the breastwork, and some at the rail fence ; and a fourth company came upon the hill after the battle began. Forty of his regiment were killed or wounded, men fell on either side of him, but Colonel Little himself escaped unharmed. He remained with his command in Cambridge, absenting himself only two days, when called home in August to attend the funeral of two of his daughters. He came into close relations with Washington, who held him in high esteem, and mentioned him as a model to some other officers who were complaining of the character of the provisions, saying that Colonel Little had found no time to grumble at hardships of that sort. Colonel Little went with the army to New York after the evacu-
ation of Boston, and was present at the disas- trons battle of Long Island. He held com- mand of Fort Greene before the engagement, and during it was stationed at Flatbush Pass. He also took part in the battle of Harlem Heights, but did not accompany his men in the retreat through New Jersey, being detained by sickness at Peekskill. The next winter he commanded an important encampment at the latter place, but in the spring of 1777 was forced to return home on account of ill health. For the same reason he was compelled in 1799 to decline the commission of brigadier- general and the command of an expedi- tion sent from Massachusetts to dislodge the enemy from their position on the Penobscot. After his retirement from military service he represented the town of Newbury in the legis- lature for some time, as he had done before the war. A stroke of paralysis in 1781 terminated his active career. Colonel Little was a man of high ability, with a keen knowledge of human nature and imperturbable self-possession, and had not his strength failed, which was doubtless undermined by excessive toil, he might have reached high rank among officers of the revolution. As it is, his record is one which his descendants may well cherish, as they do his sword used at Bunker Hill and his commission from the Con- tinental Congress. About I750,
few years after his marriage, Colonel Little built the fine old mansion at Turkey Hill, Newbury, which was his home during the rest of his life, and is still occupied by his descendants. It stood just across the road from his father's, and was an ex- pensive house for its day. The Littles, like most of the leading families in Newbury, were slaveholders at that time; and there is still extant a letter from President Eleazar Whee- lock, of Dartmouth College, to Colonel Little, in relation to one Caesar, which the former desired to purchase. The document is dated May 6, 1773, and in it President Wheelock says : "I have determined to buy the Negro if he proves to be the Slave which you take him to be." The clergyman goes on to say that he stands in very special and great necessity of his services on account of his principal cook's being gone, and offers twenty pounds, lawful money, as the purchase price. Colonel Little was very successful in accumulating this world's goods, and his estate, which he dis- posed of by will, was inventoried at sixty-two thousand, three hundred and fifty-six dollars, a large fortune for those days.
In 1743, when he was but nineteen, Moses
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STATE OF MAINE.
Little married Abigail, daughter of Joshua and Sarah (Coffin) Bailey, of Newbury, Mas- sachusetts, born February 15, 1724, a twin sis- ter of Judith Bailey, who married Moses Little's elder brother Stephen. Mrs. Abigail (Bailey) Little died February 6, 1815, having nearly completed her ninety-first year. Moses and Abigail ( Bailey) Little had eleven chil- dren, all but three of whom. Michael, Anna and Alice, lived to marry and rear families. The children were: Sarah, born December 15, 1743, married John Noyes; Michael, January 9. 1745-46. died February 15, 1745; Josiah, whose sketch follows : Abigail, April 2. 1749, married John Gideon Bailey: Lydia, Novem- ber 24, 1751, married John Atkinson; Eliza- beth. September 3, 1754, married (first) Lieu- tenant John Carr and (second) Lieutenant William Wigglesworth; Anna, March 20, 1757, died August 13, 1775 : Mary. September 22, 1759, married (first) Matthias P. Saw- yer, and (second) Joshua Follansbee ; Hannah, May 21, 1762, married (first) Dr. Moses Saw- yer, and (second) Colonel James Burnham ; Alice, May 10, 1764. died May 6, 1765; and Moses, January 20, 1767, married Elizabeth Dummer and lived on a portion of the original Turkey Hill farm, where he died at the age of ninety. Two of the daughters of this fam- ily lived to good old age. Abigail died Sep- tember 20. 1838, in her ninetieth year, and Mary died August 28, 1847, lacking but a month of eighty-eight. The two daughters, whose deaths on consecutive days occurred while their father was in the army, were Sarah, died August 14. 1775, and Anna, died the day before.
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