Submitted by Grace Hagedorn of the Historical Society of Berkeley Heights
Around 1760 Andrew Littell (1718-1790), a farmer and weaver, and his wife Mary/Molly Stewart (1725- 1805) settled a piece of land at what is now the corner of Mountain Avenue and Horseshoe Road in Berkeley Heights, and built a farmhouse. His family owned the property until 1817. In his will Andrew Littell named seven children. By the time baby Temperance was born, Mary/Polly was married and William was about to marry. This is the story of the children.
William Littell, born in 1745, was married twice, to Sarah Baker in July, 1869, and to Sarah Drake. He had at least five children. The oldest, Amos, born to Sarah Baker, is an ancestor the long time New Jersey State Senator Robert E. Littell of Sussex County. William Littell moved to Sussex and died there in 1805.
Sophia/Servia Littell was born on 1747. In 1775 she married Asa Frazee, son of Joseph Frazee of Union, then called Connecticut Farms because it was settled by people from Connecticut. Asa was not from the same line as Moses Frazee, who inherited the farmstead from his grandfather John Tilyou in 1840. Sophia and Asa lived on the north side of Sutton Hill, near the Framstead. They had three daughters and possibly other children.
Mary/Polly Littell was born in 1749. She married Zachariah Van Sickle in 1763. They were probably living in New Jersey in 1789 when their fifth child, Zachariah Jr. married Rosannah Bowman. Before 1797 the entire family, except for daughter Huldah, moved to western Pennsylvania.
Rachel Littell was born in 1851 and married Stephen Masters in 1772. He may have been the Stephen Masters born in 1754 who married Judith Sloat in 1783 in Sussex County and went to Ohio.
Andrew and Mary Littell probably lost some children in the 1750s. Ephraim, the next child named in Andrew’s will was born in December, 1760, almost certainly in the farmhouse. In May, 1778, Ephraim Littell left home to join the Continental Army. According to his enlistment records he was a farmer, 5 feet 9 inches tall, with light hair, gray eyes and dark complexion. He served in the Second Regiment of the Light Dragoons for at least two years. The regiment consisted mostly of mounted troops, with some foot soldier, from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Records show that Ephraim was briefly at Valley Forge and then in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.
Ephraim married about 1781, perhaps in New England, perhaps in Pennsylvania. Of his seven known children, born between 1782 and 1801, a few were probably born in Pennsylvania, most in New Jersey. The children who spent most of their youth in Pennsylvania named either Pennsylvania or New Jersey as their birth states at various times. Records show that in 1789, 1793, 1795 and 1796, Ephraim paid New Jersey property taxes, probably on the farmstead. In 1789, in compensation for his war service, Ephraim was awarded a warrant for 100 acres of land in the military district of Ohio. There is some controversy over what happened with that warrant. Either Ephraim sold or traded it before his death in Ohio in 1805 or his widow Grissel/Griselda sold the warrant and, with an extra $20, bought land someplace in New Jersey. Griselda died in the 1830s.
Hannah Littell, born in 1762 married Thomas Heddy/Hoddy in 1785.
Temperance Littell, the youngest, was born in 1769. In his 1790 will, her father left his loom and all related weaving equipment to Temperance, who had married Joseph Valentine in 1787. They moved to Sussex County about 1795. Joseph was a witness to his brother-in-law William Littell’s will, and an executor of his Andrew Littell’s estate, helping to sell the farmstead in 1817, two years after Mary/Molly’s death in 1815. Later in 1817 the Valentines moved to Guernsey County, Ohio, where Joseph died in 1820 and Temperance died in 1839. They had eight children.
The Littell-Lord Farmstead is the oldest continuously occupied Farmstead in Union County. It is owned by the Township of Berkeley Heights and maintained as a museum by the Historical Society of Berkeley Heights.
(above) Family tree of Andrew Littell, first settler on what is now the Littell-Lord Farmstead in Berkeley Heights, NJ. Provided by Grace Hagedorn of the Historical Society of Berkeley Heights
