George Washington Littlefield (June 21, 1842–November 10, 1920) was a Confederate officer, cattleman, banker, and regent of the University of Texas. Born in Mississippi, Littlefield moved to Texas with his family as a boy.
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George W. Littlefield was born June 21, 1842 in Panola County, Mississippi to Fleming Littlefield and Mildred Terrell Satterwhite White Littlefield. In 1850, the family moved to Texas, settling in western Gonzales County near the community of Belmont.
His father died in 1853, and for one year in the late 1850s George attended Baylor University, then located in Independence in Washington County. By 1860, the family had moved closer to the town of Gonzales, living in the fertile bottomlands at the confluence of the Guadalupe and San Marcos rivers. At 18 years old, George was listed in the census as the manager of his mother's plantation. The real estate was valued at over $23,000 with personal property valued at $30,000. The personal estate included thirty slaves.
In 1861, Littlefield enlisted in the 8th Texas Cavalry, popularly known as Terry's Texas Rangers. He mustered in as Second Sergeant of Company I. On January 10, 1862, he was elected 2nd Lieutenant.
He commanded the company at the Battle of Shiloh, because the Captain and 1st Lieutenant were on furlough in Texas. The Captain never returned and the 1st Lieutenant was killed a few days after returning to the regiment. Littlefield was elected Captain on May 10. There was only one man younger than he in the entire company and he was not yet 20 years old.
He commanded Company I through the battle of Perryville. After the battle of Chickamauga on September 18–20, 1863, he was made acting major of the regiment. On December 26, 1863, at Mossy Creek in East Tennessee he was severely wounded and given a full promotion to major.
Littlefield was discharged from service due to his wounds and returned to Gonzales County. He was unable to walk without the assistance of crutches until 1867.
Littlefield did not prosper immediately after the war. His attempts at farming foundered. River floods in 1869 and 1870 took him to the brink of bankruptcy. It was not until 1871 that he speculated in the cattle market and made a profit. Over the next several years, he drove large herds of beef cattle from South Texas to Kansas. Ranches he established or owned included the LIT in the Texas Panhandle; the Bosque Grande in the Pecos River Valley and the Four Lakes on the plains, both in New Mexico; the Yellow House on the Texas South Plains; and the Mill Creek and Saline in the Texas Hill Country. At one time, his cattle branded LFD roamed over an area of Eastern New Mexico the size of the state of Rhode Island.
In 1883, he moved to Austin. He organized and served as president of the American National Bank from 1890 until 1919. The bank commonly paid an annual dividend of 20 percent to its shareholders.
Littlefield was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Texas in 1911, and his largess to the school in the following nine years became legendary.
Littlefield gave and bequeathed some $3 million to the university—more than any other individual during the first fifty years of its existence. As a result of his philanthropy, Littlefield's name is visibly entwined with many aspects of university life. In 1914 Littlefield, feeling the university's textbooks were too Northern-focused, established the "Littlefield Fund for Southern History" to amass the archival sources from which more accurate history could be written; many Southern-themed books in circulation at the university's libraries today are stamped with his name as a result. In 1917, when Governor James E. Ferguson vetoed appropriations for the University in the state budget, Littlefield offered to personally fund its operations for the biennial period.
Littlefield paid for a prominent and well-recognized fountain on campus, the Littlefield Fountain, which was established as a war memorial. He also bankrolled the construction of one of the university's dorms, named Alice P. Littlefield Dormitory after his wife. He stipulated that it should be used specifically for freshman women.
He willed his house to the university, which today uses it for offices and special events.
Littlefield married Alice Payne Tillar on January 14, 1863. They had two children, both of whom died in infancy. As a result, he was very close to his extended family, paying for the college education of all of his many nieces and nephews. He also employed nephews and the husbands of nieces as managers in his many business concerns.
George W. Littlefield died at his home in Austin on November 10, 1920. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin next to his wife who survived him by fifteen years. Buried near him on the plot is his life-long servant Nathan Stokes.
Works on Littlefield include David B. Gracy II, George Washington Littlefield: A Biography in Business (Ph.D. dissertation; Texas Tech University, 1971) and J. Evetts Haley's George W. Littlefield, Texan (1943) through the University of Oklahoma Press in Norman.
The city of Littlefield, Texas is named after him. He is also the namesake of the local Austin camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.