Samuel Brown Little

A house painter in Claremont, NH, he enlisted in Company G, 5th New Hampshire Infantry at age 33 on 27 September 1861, and mustered in 12 October 1861 as First Sergeant. He was appointed 2nd Lieutenant on 1 August 1862.

He was wounded in the right thigh in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam.

By 1 October he was a patient at the Academy Hospital, Chambersburg, PA and was then furloughed home. He rejoined his regiment at Fredericksburg, VA on 13 December ...

...Colonel Edward E. Cross and other officers seeing the feeble state Lieut Little was in tried to dissuade him from going into the battle but he persisted."

Basic information from Child1. Academy Hospital patient list in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 1 October 1862. Personal details from family genealogists and the 1860 US Census. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture thanks to Tom Rice from a photograph in the Liljenquist Family collection at the Library of Congress.

He married Mary L Gould (1830-1878) in November 1849 in Cambridge, MA; they had no children. She received a small Army widow's pension after his death.

His brother Moses Carter Little (born 1824) enlisted in the 19th Massachusetts Infantry in August 1862 and was killed at Fredericksburg in December.

For much more about the Little brothers at Fredericksburg, see John Banks' blog post. John's the source of the quote above, from Otis F.R. Waite's Claremont, War History, April, 1861 to April, 1865 (1868).

07/24/1828; Newburyport, MA

12/24/1862; Falmouth, VA; burial in Pleasant Street Cemetery, Claremont, NH