CHARLES EDGAR LITTLEFIELD
LITTLEFIELD, CHARLES EDGAR, lawyer, speaker of the Maine house of representatives, attorney-general of the state of Maine four years, representative from the second district of Maine in the fifty-sixth, fifty-seventh, fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth Congresses, was born in Lebanon, York county, Maine, June 21, 1851. His father, the Reverend William H. Littlefield, was a clergyman of the Free Baptist denomination who before entering the ministry had learned the trade of millwright, in which occupation he was an expert workman. He was a direct descendent of Edmund Littlefield who emigrated from England and settled in the Piscataqua district of Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century. William H. Littlefield married Mary, daughter of Paul and Dorothy Stevens, also descended from early Piscataqua settlers. Charles Edgar Littlefield as a boy attended the town schools, and Foxcroft academy, and learned the trade of carpenter at which trade he worked until 1874 when he determined to fit himself for the practice of law. He was admitted to the bar of Knox county in 1876 and began practice in Rockland. In 1899 he formed a partnership with the younger brother, Arthur S. Littlefield, in the same city. He attained prominence at the bar and was active in politics, being elected a representative in the state legislature, serving in 1885 and 1887. He was elected speaker of the house in 1887. He was attorney-general of the state of Maine, 1889-93; a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1892 and 1896, at each convention serving as chairman of the Maine delegation. At a special election held June 19, 1899, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Nelson Dingley, Jr., who had represented the second district of Maine in the forty-seventh to the fifty-fifth Congresses, Mr. Littlefield was elected his successor, receiving eleven thousand six hundred and twenty-four votes, the Democratic candidate, John Scott, receiving two thousand seven hundred and thirty-six votes.
On taking his seat in the fifty-sixth Congress at the beginning of the first session in December, 1899, Representative Littlefield was
