Unusual Name – Jeremiah Little (1810-1883)

I have a good number of German and Early New England ancestors with names I would consider unusual, but I think most were fairly normal in their cultural context. However, I choose Jeremiah because his name was definitely unusual for his time and place. With most of my Scottish ancestors I am scrambling to distinguish between fifty people of the same name, and, since Scottish records are pay-per-view, searching for common-name ancestors can get expensive quickly. However Jeremiah Little did not cause any problems in that respect. He was the only Jeremiah Little in all of Scotland during the 1841 census and the only Jeremiah Little to have a marriage recorded in Scotland’s Old Parish Registers. Unfortunately because of his uncommon name I can also say with confidence that his birth was not recorded on any of the currently available Scottish baptism registers, so I do not know the names of his parents.

Photo labeled as Jeremiah and Margaret Little

Jeremiah was born somewhere in Dumfriesshires, Scotland about 1810. On 20 Feb 1831 banns were proclaimed in Dumfries, and on 28 Feb 1831 Jeremiah Little and Margaret Douglas were married in Annan Parish, where Jeremiah was living at the time.  Their daughter Mary had been baptized about a month before their wedding on January 28^th after having been born on December 5^th of the previous year. Her baptism lists her as “l. d.” or “lawful daughter”, indicating she was legitimate, even though her parents were not yet married at the time of her baptism.  Perhaps the baptism was recorded after the marriage had taken place or the parson knew that Jeremiah and Margaret were about to be married.

Ten years later the first Scottish census took place and Jeremiah was easy to find. He was listed as a Taylor, age 30, living with his wife Jane, and his daughter Mary, age 6. There are a couple discrepancies here and if Jeremiah’s name was not so unusual I might doubt this was his family. First his wife’s name is listed as Jane rather than Margaret, and second his daughter Mary was born 10-11 years before the census, not 6. I believe his wife’s name to be a mistake on this census, because her name goes back to being Margaret on the next census, or possibly Jane was a middle name she sometimes used. However the next census continues to list Mary’s birth year as about 1836, and while and older woman might want to hide her age, there doesn’t seem to be a reason that an 11 year-old would be listed as 6 or a 20 year old as 14. I therefore think the first Mary may have died and this Mary, born five or so years later, was named after her.

Newspaper article about Jeremiah's shop's robbery

At some point between 1841 and 1850 the Little family immigrated to America. They appeared on the 1850 census in Gallipolis, Gallia, Ohio, and Jeremiah is again listed as a Tailor living with his wife Margaret and daughter Mary, age 14. Margaret must have died soon after the 1850 census, because in by 1855 Jeremiah had remarried to a widow named Sarah Donaldson Robb. Her first husband Samuel Robb had died in 1842, leaving her a widow with three children. Sarah inherited some land from her father and she and Jeremiah signed several deeds with her siblings in 1855. Jeremiah was naturalized in 1856 in Jefferson Ohio, but unfortunately his naturalization doesn’t give very much information, besides the fact that he was born in Scotland.

In 1865 Jeremiah’s Tailoring establishment was robbed, and thieves made off with a considerable amount of valuable merchandise. Fortunately the stolen goods were later found in a nearby barn. In 1868 Jeremiah and Sarah sold the land Sarah still owned in Ohio and moved to Bridgeport Connecticut, where Jeremiah continued to work as a tailor.  In 1870 they were living alone, but in 1880 they were living with Sarah’s daughter Rachel Robb and an adopted daughter name Lillie Barker who was five years old and born in Tennessee. Sarah’s estate would describe a “double house” she owned in Bridgeport so they were probably the owners of a duplex.

Jeremiah Little wrote his will in September of 1883 and it was admitted to probate in late October, so he must have died soon after writing it. His will was simple. His gold ring and pocket watch were to go to his daughter Mary J Scott (my ancestor), and the rest of his estate was to go to his wife. Sarah Little died three years later in 1886. Her estate was also probate in Bridgeport, and one of the provisions in her will was that a tombstone be set up in her grave-plot in Ohio for herself and her two husbands. Lillie, the adopted daughter from the 1880 census was not mentioned in either of their probate files. I certainly hope she was cared for, because she would have only been eleven with Sarah died.

Jeremiah and Margaret are ancestors that are especially interesting to me, because he has so few descendants. My great grandmother was the Little’s only great grandchild, and my grandfather and his sister were their only great-great grandchildren. As with many of my Scottish ancestors I'm hopeful that Scottish Kirk session records might shed some more light on Jeremiah and Margaret's lives in Scotland, and possibly even lead to their parents. I'd also like to see Jeremiah's grave in Ohio and figure out what happened to Lillie Barker.

I believe these to be photos of Jeremiah and Sarah Little, because of the location and the dates when the studio was active