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Peter Little

American politician (1775-1830)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ1674112
Source-derived summary

Peter Little (December 11, 1775 – February 5, 1830) was a U.S. representative from Maryland.

Biography

Born in Petersburg, Pennsylvania, 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 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, 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 who went on to be a Brigadier General in the American Civil War.

After the War, Little was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William Pinkney. He was reelected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fifteenth, 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.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Peter Little” as american politician (1775-1830). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Peter, Little and American.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1775, 1830, 1806, 1807—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1775-12-11. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Peter, Little and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Peter Little”, the useful work is to connect “american politician (1775-1830)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1674112. VIAF identifies the subject as 22026801. The Library of Congress control number is nr94032670. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1775, 1830, 1806 and 1807.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Peter Little primary sources, Peter Little archive and Peter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Peter Little” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.