THE PAPERS OF
CALEB V. LITTLEPAGE
| HOME PAGE PATENTS FAMILY | Caleb Van
Ausdol Littlepage was born November 13, 1826 in the area of Virginia that
later became West Virginia. He and his family moved from Virginia to Missouri
and then to Texas. He received a medical discharge from the
Confederate military in 1864. On February 15, 1860 he
married Nancy (Nannie) McKinney Prather in Travis County, Texas. Two of their six children
were born in Guatemala where Caleb had moved his
family during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Caleb was
an inventor who took out a number of patents. As he worked to have his
inventions built and sold, he traveled a great deal. The separation from
his wife and children was very difficult for him and he conveyed his
loneliness in the many letters he wrote home. He died between June 1875
and July 1876, possibly in Guatemala.
While there is some genealogical information on this web site, it is very limited. My primary purpose is to share Caleb's letters and papers with family members and other interested people. They truly are a window to another time, but also representative of universal and timeless human themes. I would like to thank all those who helped with the construction of this site. A special thank you to Caleb's great granddaughter, Nancy Lee Fretwell Delmos (January 5, 1938 - September 1, 2007), in whose memory this site is dedicated, for holding on to these treasures and for sharing them with me. Marilyn Slagle |