Our Littlefield-Stevens line contains some of the most dramatic, war-torn history on the early American frontier. When we dig beneath the birth and death dates of this branch, we find a family positioned directly in the crosshairs of the French and Indian Wars, defined by garrison attacks, captivity, and a major geographical pivot to Maine's maritime frontier.
The Frontier Crucible: The Capture of Moses Littlefield
To understand Martha Littlefield’s extraordinary century of life, you have to look at the violent world into which she was born. Her father, Moses Littlefield (1666–1707), lived on the absolute edge of the English frontier in Wells and Berwick, Maine.
During King William's War (1688–1697), French forces and their Wabanaki allies targeted these exact settlements to halt English expansion.
- The Captivity: In 1692, when Martha was just an infant, her father Moses was captured during a brutal raid on Wells.
- The Interrogation: He was marched through the wilderness into French Canada (Quebec). Because the Littlefield family comprised prominent regional surveyors and millwrights, Moses possessed vital intelligence about frontier fortifications. He was thoroughly interrogated by French authorities before eventually being ransomed back to Massachusetts years later.
This foundational trauma explains why Martha’s birthdate is an approximation (Abt. 1691). She spent her childhood inside fortified garrison houses, ducking behind stockades whenever the alarm riders came through.
The 1707 Tragedy: The Death of Moses Littlefield
The frontier never truly settled. During Queen Anne's War, the raids resumed. In March 1707, Moses Littlefield was killed in action during a sudden skirmish near Wells, Maine.
Martha was only about sixteen years old when her father was killed. Her mother, Martha Lord, was left to manage the family's exposed land holdings. To survive the ongoing conflict, the widowed Martha Lord pulled her children back south into the relative safety of Dover and Somersworth, New Hampshire.
This strategic retreat is exactly how our 7th great-grandmother Martha Littlefield met her husband, Thomas Stevens.
The Post-War Pivot: The Reoccupation of Boothbay
Our 6th great-grandmother, Olive Stevens (1717–1793), grew up in the safety of New Hampshire, but the pull of the Maine frontier remained in her blood. When she married the master blacksmith John Catland (Catlin), they executed a major post-war migration.
THE NORTHERN MARITIME PIVOT
[Wells/Berwick, ME] ───────► [Dover/Somersworth, NH] ───────► [Boothbay/Bristol, ME]
• Frontier raids. • Post-1707 safety zone. • Post-war reclamation.
• Moses killed (1707). • Martha marries Thomas. • John Catland's Forge.
Following the fall of French Canada, the Maine coast suddenly opened for permanent English settlement. Olive and John Catland migrated straight to Boothbay and Bristol, Maine.
- This move was a deliberate reclamation. The Booth family (our ancestors via the master lineage) had originally surveyed and given their name to Boothbay a century prior before being driven out by the Indian Wars.
- By moving back, Olive Stevens and John Catland re-established the family's presence in the region, anchoring the local maritime economy with John’s revolutionary blacksmith forge.
Two Worlds, One Life: Martha's Century of Perspective
When Martha Littlefield died in Dover, New Hampshire, on Christmas Eve in 1792 at the age of 101, the local community recognized her as a living archive. Consider the staggering transitions her single eyes witnessed:
- The Currency: She went from using British pounds and wampum trade beads in a raw wilderness to holding the newly minted United States dollar.
- The Warfare: She grew up fighting matches against flintlock muskets and French raiders, survived the global campaigns of the American Revolution, and died under the constitutional presidency of George Washington.
- The Geography: She saw Maine transform from a blood-soaked, abandoned graveyard of ruined cabins into a booming, sovereign network of American shipping ports.
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