Little Family Papers, 1853-1956

SERIES DESCRIPTIONS

Series I. Correspondence

Subseries 1. Class of 1888 Letters, 1927-1956, n.d.

This subseries consists of four files of letters written to Alice Little regarding the 50-year reunion of the Class of 1888. The last set of letters contains a wealth of information on the activities of members of that class and their families since their graduation.

Subseries 2. Cowles-Little Family Letters, 1858-1949

The Cowles-Little Family correspondence contains several personal letters to Sarah, Alice, and Bessie Little, some regard the Tank Home and others came from missionaries around the world. Also included are letters sent and received by Clara Little Simpson and Elizabeth Lord.

Subseries 3. Dart-Leonard Family Letters, 1867-1917

The Dart-Leonard family correspondence consists mainly of letters from Sidney and Clara Dart in Africa to his family in the United States, 1911-1927; 11 of these were written by Clara. Also included is correspondence between other members of the Dart-Leonard family and with friends, l867-1905. There are a few letters from other women missionaries in Africa.

Series II. Miscellaneous, 1879, 1883, 1895, 1903-07, n.d.

This series contains materials relating to the education of Helen Dart and Clara Helen Little, and a photogaph of two women taken in Burma in 1883. A folder including grades and attendance records of Helen Dart while she was a student in the Oberlin Public School system has been marked restricted. Another folder holds a book account notebook for an Oberlin Theological Seminary student (1879), pages of notes from a religion course, and an algebra workbook belonging to Clara H. Little (1895).

Series III. Printed Matter, 1879-1927, n.d.

This series includes printed matter from various women’s and missionary organizations, including the Women’s National Sabbath Alliance, and a coverless volume on Christian influence in Micronesia titled The Old and the New in Micronesia (Chicago: WBMI, 1907), by Florence A. Fensham and Beulah Logan Tuthill. The miscellaneous printed materials include receipts, invitations, newspaper clippings, and a memorial book collected by Sarah Cowles Little and Clara Helen Little.

Series IV. Talks and Lectures, 1853, 1908

A talk and notes on a set of lectures by individuals outside the Little family are included in this series. “The Early College Buildings,” typewritten and edited on several note cards, was read in the College Chapel by Oberlin College President King in the Spring of 1908. Marcellus Emery copied seventy-eight pages of Professor Parker Cleveland’s chemical lectures at Bowdoin College (1853) in the included notebook.

Series V. Writings by Sarah C. Little, 1905, 1883

The writings series contains two published writings of Sarah C. Little. A manuscript of Sarah C. Little’s 1883 essay “Oberlin and the Education of Women” is included which was later published in Oberlin Jubilee, 1833-1883, pp. 146-58. The series also includes a biography of “Mrs. Elizabeth W. Russell Lord” and a letter concerning the Living Endowment Union which appeared in pp. 89-91 and 98, respectively, of the January 1905 Oberlin Alumni Magazine.

Alice and Elizabeth Little were granddaughters of Henry and Alice Welch Cowles, Oberlin College professor of theology and second principal of the Ladies Department, respectively. Alice Little (1865-1958), the primary subject of this collection, received a literary degree from Oberlin in 1888. After graduation, she taught for five years in a missionary school on Kusaie in Micronesia. The maps she collected and the detailed notes she took on trips to the surrounding islands were later used by the United States Navy in World War II. Upon her return to the United States, Alice worked for seven years for the Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior (WBMI) in Chicago. In 1907, she moved back to Oberlin to live with her sister Elizabeth (“Bessie”), although she remained active in missionary work as treasurer and trustee of the WBMI. She also was a trustee of the Ohio Congregational Conference for nine years.

Elizabeth Little (1863-1944) studied at Oberlin in the preparatory department in 1886-87 and in the Conservatory in 1898-99. Aside from some letters to “Bessie,” this collection contains no other information related to her.

Sarah Cowles Little (1838-1912, A.B. 1859), their mother, was a teacher and then superintendent of the State School for the Blind in Janesville, Wisconsin, from 1861 to 1891. She married Thomas H. Little there in 1862, but was widowed in 1875. Upon returning to Oberlin, she supported the establishment of the Tank Home for missionary children.

In addition to the papers of the Little family, the file includes correspondence of the Dart-Leonard family. Like Alice Little, Clara Miller Dart (Mt. Holyoke 1904) and Sidney Dart (A B 1910) were missionaries, devoting 25 years to working in Angola and other parts of Africa, 1911-1936. Sidney’s parents, Francis H. Dart and Mary T. Leonard Dart, attended Oberlin in the 1860s and 1870s but did not graduate.

Sources Consulted

The biographical sketch was taken from the Guide to the Women’s History Sources in the Oberlin College Archives.