Peter Little (December 11, 1775 – February 5, 1830) was a

U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...

from

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

Biography

Born in

Petersburg, Pennsylvania Petersburg is a borough in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was a stop on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line between Tyrone and Huntingdon and the junction point for the Petersburg Branch. The population was 480 at th ...

, Little attended the common schools. He initially worked as a watchmaker, until he moved to Freedom, Maryland and engaged in agricultural pursuits. He served as member of the

Maryland House of Delegates The Maryland House of Delegates is the lower house of the Maryland General Assembly, legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland. It consists of 141 delegates elected from 47 districts. The House of Delegates Chamber is in the Maryland State House ...

in 1806 and 1807. Little was elected as a Republican to the Twelfth Congress, where he served from March 4, 1811, to March 3, 1813. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1812. During the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

, Little was commissioned colonel of the Thirty-eighth Maryland Infantry and served from May 19, 1813, to June 15, 1815. In 1817, Peter and his wife Catharine had a son named

Lewis Henry Little Lewis Henry Little (March 19, 1817 – September 19, 1862) was a career United States Army officer and a Confederate States Army, Confederate History of Confederate States Army Generals#Brigadier general, brigadier general during the American ...

who went on to be a Brigadier General in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. After the War, Little was elected as a

Democratic-Republican The Democratic-Republican Party (also referred to by historians as the Republican Party or the Jeffersonian Republican Party), was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 1790s. It championed l ...

to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of

William Pinkney William Pinkney (March 17, 1764February 25, 1822) was an American statesman and diplomat, and was appointed the seventh U.S. Attorney General by President James Madison. Biography William Pinkney was born in 1764 in Annapolis in the Province o ...

. He was reelected as a

to the

Fifteenth In music, a fifteenth or double octave, abbreviated ''15ma'', is the interval between one musical note and another with one-quarter the wavelength or quadruple the frequency. It has also been referred to as the bisdiapason. The fourth harmonic, ...

, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses, as a Jackson Republican to the Eighteenth, and as an Adams candidate to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses, and served from September 2, 1816, to March 3, 1829. In Congress, Little served as chairman of the Committee on Accounts (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Congresses), and as a member of the Committee on Pensions and Revolutionary Claims (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses), the Committee on Revolutionary Claims (Nineteenth Congress), and the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Navy (Twentieth Congress). He declined to be a candidate for renomination. After his tenure in Congress, Little served as judge of the orphans' court of

Baltimore County Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland. The county is part of the Central Maryland region of the state. Baltimore County partly surrounds but does not include the independent city ...

. He died in Freedom, Maryland, is interred in Freedom Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, near Eldersburg, Maryland.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Little, Peter 1775 births 1830 deaths People from Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania Maryland National Republicans Members of the Maryland House of Delegates American militiamen in the War of 1812 Maryland state court judges American militia officers Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Maryland Military personnel from Pennsylvania 19th-century members of the Maryland General Assembly 19th-century members of the United States House of Representatives