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File contributed to the Fulton County ILGenWeb Project
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Source: Portrait and Biographical Album of Fulton County
Biographical Publishing Co., Chicago, 1890

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The Biography of George W. LITTLE 

Pages 399-400, transcribed in full by Danni Hopkins 

[Surnames: BREED, EMERSON, LITTLE, LORD, MASON, PALMER, SCHOONMAKER] 

    
GEORGE W. LITTLE, the subject of our present sketch has been prominently identified with the progress of Farmington and surrounding county, His birth occurred at the town of Hampstead, N. H., August, 12, 1810, he being the son of Nathaniel and Abiah (Emerson) Little, both natives of New Hampshire. To Mr. Little's parents were born four children: viz., Polly, Belinda, Robert E. and George Washington, of whom the last named is the only one living. 
    
Our subject passed his boyhood on a farm, enjoying the quietude of rural life until about seventeen years old. At that age he went to Boston, where he clerked in a West India goods store for a period of five years. He was invited to join Lowell Mason's choir in the Bowdoin Street Church at the "Hub," and continued too sing tenor in that choir for four years. Being thoroughly ambitious and imagining the West to be a broad unbroken field where wealth and fame were to be had for the asking, Mr. Little sailed for New Orleans and from that point came up the Mississippi river to St. Louis. However, not liking that place he soon moved to Quincy, Ill., from there to Jacksonville, and finally to Peoria in the spring of 1834. He settled on the Marchant Settlement (now known as Farmington Township) and paid Mr. Palmer two hundred dollars for ten acres of land with a view to laying out the town of Farmington. This was in September of the year 1834. He built the first store in Farmington, and was the first man to engage in a mercantile business there, and his success even from the start was good. He has served as school Treasurer uninterruptedly for more than fifty-three years and for eight years has been Justice of the Peace. In addition to this he has been Notary Public for thirty years and served as Township Clerk for several years. He is a strong supporter of the Republican party, and actively interested in politics. He has been chorister since the first church was built in Farmington in 1856. At first he was identified with the Presbyterian Church, serving as Elder in same, but has long been connected with the Congregational Church, the Presbyterian Church having been merged into that, and is a faithful Christian. Indeed, a short biographical sketch cannot in any measure render full justice to so prominent and popular a citizen. He has been interested in the religious, mercantile and social circles of this place, and has by means of his superiority and energy done much to advance all worthy causes. 
    
The subject of our sketch was married in Lyman, Me., in 1834 to Miss Louisa Lambert Lord, native of Alford, Me., and member of an ancient and aristocratic family. To this union were born seven children: viz., Louisa Jane, Frances Helen, who died in childhood; Belinda Tarleton, who married Everett R. Breed and is now deceased: Alfred Herman, deceased; Carrie Alice, Robert Franklin, and Nathaniel. Carrie A. married David Schoonmaker, and resides in West Union, Iowa. 
   
Our subject at the present writing is in his eighty-first year, but conducts the choir at the Congregational Church. Educated in the East and having every advantage both for intellectual training and social culture Mr. Little is well fitted to be a leader. He has in his possession a genealogy of the Little family which extends back into the sixteenth century, and also preserves a cane which was made out of a log used in building the first house belonging to his ancestors who settled at Newberry, Mass., in 1640. This family is now very numerous, and a complete history of it would fill a large volume and be very interesting reading matter. Mr. Little's grandfather and great-grandfather were both soldiers of the Revolutionary Army, the former as Lieutenant, the latter as Commissary.