Littleton, Solomon

The year of Solomon Littleton’s birth is not known, but he was at least sixty-three years old at the time of his death in early 1828. He was likely a young adult at the time of the American Revolution. In 1820 Littleton lived in Waterford. Originally a small community built around Janney’s Mill along Catoctin Creek by the Society of Friends, Waterford quickly expanded during the first half of the nineteenth century. Littleton was a farmer, and when he died he had eighteen acres of wheat and fifteen acres of rye “still in the ground” on rented land. He was married to Margaret Littleton, and they had six children. Solomon Littleton’s estate was valued at $740.20 when he died.

Although Littleton had once owned land in Loudoun County below Goose Creek, it appears he may not have been a landowner at the time of his death because he rented land from Isaac Craven. In 1808, Littleton and seven others collectively sold eighty-nine acres to a man who lived in Leesburg named John Payne for approximately $1,500. It is possible that after Littleton sold his land in 1808, renting land was more financially viable in an economy where land, as one historian has noted, tended to “circulate in the hands of one wealthy speculator to another, each sale drawing a price more difficult for poorer folk to meet.” At the time, many middle-class fathers also began to spend money on their children’s education rather than on land, believing that educating sons, in particular, was a better investment for the future. It is also possible that Littleton transferred land he owned to one of his adult sons. Littleton clearly was not poor, because he used enslaved labor on his farm. In 1820 Littleton owned two enslaved people. At the time of his death only one is mentioned in his will: “a black woman named Gillisa.”

By Duncan Crossan