Rebecca Johnston Littley

Rebecca's daughter Amelia was widowed when her older son, George, was a baby, and before the birth of her younger son, Charles, so Rebecca and Daniel Littley took care of George from the time he was two years old.

In his book, The Autobiography of Elder Charles Derry (Price Publishing Company, Independence, Missouri), her younger son wrote,

I am the youngest son of Charles and Amelia Littley Derry, and was born on the twenty-fifth day of July 1826, at Walsam Wood, Staffordshire, England. My father had died seven months prior to my birth. My mother...was poor, and having myself and my brother to care for, she was compelled to hire out to work for a living. And as no one would permit her to have her children with her, she had to put us out to the care of others when I was ten weeks old. My borhter was placed in his grandmother's care and I to the care of an aunt, but negligence on her part bid fair to limit my days to my infancy, which, when mother saw, she placed me in more kindly and careful hands. And when about two years old, I was placed in the care of my matrnal grandmother, with whom I remained until I was between nine and ten years of age, when I went to work for a living.... Grandmother was a good woman, very rigid in her way, and my obdurate spirit could hardly bear restraint; hence I was by no means a model child, and harshness did not modify my disposition.

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Last updated: March 2004