Col. C. B. Little '81 Dies

Life Trustee of College Was Business and Civic Leader of Bismarck, N. D., from Early Territorial Days

To HIS LEGION OF FRIENDS and to Dartmouth men acquainted with his long and invaluable service to the College, the death last month of Clarence B. Little '81, Life Trustee, was a saddening event. Colonel Little, who had been a banker and civic and political leader of Bismarck, N. D., from its earliest frontier days, had been in ill health for some time but his condition had not been considered critical until a few days before his death in St. Paul, Minn., on September 25. He was 83 years old.

A member of the Dartmouth Alumni Council from its inception in 1913 until 1920, the last five years as president, Col. Little was elected an Alumni Trustee of the College in 1921 and four years later was made a Life Trustee. At the time of his election in 1921 the College awarded him the degree of Master of Arts. He was honored by the Dartmouth College Alumni Association of the Northwest last March "in recognition of sixty years of conspicuous service as a loyal, generous and devoted alumnus and friend of the College." During all the years of his membership on the Alumni Council and the Board of Trustees he missed scarcely a meeting, a record of which he was particularly proud. As part of his Trustee duties he served for many years on the Committee on Investments.

At the fall meeting of the Board of Trustees on October 16, the members with whom Col. Little had served for so many years made formal expression of their affectionate regard. Their resolution was adopted as follows:

Be it resolved, that there be incorporatedin the records the following appreciationof Clarence B. Little of the Class of 1881,who on September 25, 1941 closed a brilliant and adventurous life marked by outstanding success in business, crowded withpublic service, and illuminated throughout by extraordinary devotion to Dartmouth College.

Living well beyond the normal measureof years, he appeared never to grow old inbody or in mind, for each new day, eachnew hour was exciting, filled with possibilities.

To him the greatest of all treasures wasfriendship. He sought it always in a spiritof admiration for the qualities of othersand he was richly rewarded.

In commemoration of the fulfillment ofhis term as Life Trustee of Dartmouth College, his fellow Trustees adopt this Resolution—not in sorrow, because sorrow hasno place in the completion of so triumphant a career; not in tribute to hisachievements, for the record is too long tobe included here, but as an expression oftheir deep affection for a great and simpleman.

Col. Little was a generous and often anonymous contributor to the Alumni Fund and other Dartmouth projects. With his death it was made known that he was the anonymous donor of $40,000 for the chime of bells in the tower of Baker Memorial Library.

Funeral services for Col. Little were held in his native town of Pembroke, N. H., on October 1. Honorary bearers included President Hopkins, John R. McLane '07, and Dr. John F. Gile '16, all members of the Board of Trustees; Attorney William H. Oppenheimer of St. Paul; Fred L. Conklin of Bismarck; and George F. Thurber 'll and Arthur S. Bolster '04 of Nashua, N. H. Philip S. Marden '94 and Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles '02 were also present from the Board of Trustees, and Halsey C. Edgerton '06, treasurer, and Dean Lloyd K. Neidlinger '23 were other official representatives of the College.

Fred A. Howland '87, former Dartmouth Trustee and president of the National Life Insurance Company of Montpelier, Vt., and Charles F. Cresswell of New York City represented the Association of Life Insurance Presidents; and Morton C. Tuttle '97, former Trustee, was also among the prominent persons at the services.

Col. Little was born in Pembroke on November 18, 1857, the son of George Peabody and Elizabeth Ann (Knox) Little. After attending Pembroke Academy he entered Dartmouth and was granted his A.B. degree with the Class of 1881. He entered upon the study of law with Chase and Streeter in Concord and also attended the Harvard Law School, earning admission to the bar in 1883.

In seeking a promising place for the practice of law, Col. Little chose Bismarck, N. D., when it was still a struggling frontier town in territorial days. His subsequent life for half a century was that of a leader in the growth of Bismarck, and civic and political honors came to him in great number. He was a Republican member of the first North Dakota senate, serving with distinction for twenty years, a record for that body which still stands. Throughout that period he was chairman of the judiciary committee and helped frame many of North Dakota's basic laws. He was president pro tem in 1897 and in 1904 was elected chairman of the Republican state committee. In 1916 he served as delegate-at-large to the Republican national convention.

When the territorial militia was organized early in Mr. Little's Bismarck career, he took an active part in it and was designated inspector general, with the rank of colonel. He held this position for three years and then resigned because of the pressure of other duties, among which were those of Judge of Probate for Burleigh County from 1884 to 1888, and president of the Bismarck Board of Education from 1887 to 1891.

When Col. Little settled in Bismarck one of his first friends was R. B. Mellon of the famous banking family. He became one of Mellon's competitors when he was elected a director of the Capital National Bank in 1884 and two years later became president. Col. Little held that position until 1895, when he bought the controlling interest in the First National Bank, of which he was president at the time of his death. He acquired considerable real estate holdings, which rose in value as Bismarck prospered, and for many years he was one of the city's biggest tax payers.

At the time of his death Col. Little also was president of the Provident Life Insurance Company, which he had helped to found a quarter of a century ago. He also was a member of the executive committee of the First Bank Stock Corporation of Minneapolis. He was at one time vice president of the American Bankers' Association and also a member of the Capital Issues Commission of the Ninth Federal Reserve District. Among his many civic positions were those of president of the Bismarck Public Library Board and president of the North Dakota Historical Society.

Active socially as well as in business, Col. Little was a member of the Masonic and Elks lodges and of the University, Somerset and Country Clubs in the Twin Cities, of the Union Club in Boston, and of the Hollywood Country Club in California. He was eminent commander of the Knights Templar in Bismarck for three years and later was grand commander of the Knights Templar of North Dakota. At Dartmouth he was a member of Kappa Kappa Kappa.

Col. Little's first wife, Caroline Gore Little, to whom he was married in 1885, died in 1933. In June, 1938, he married Mrs. Irene L. Shepard, who survives him. He is also survived by a son, George P. Little '14 of Lomita, Calif.; a daughter, Mrs. Viroque Little Bradley of Bismarck; and a stepson, Eugene W. Leonard '21 of Minneapolis.

C. B. LITTLE '81 WAS HONORED BY TWIN CITIES ALUMNI The life trustee of the College whose death September 25 removed one of the stanchestDartmouth men from the ranks of the alumni was presented with an inscribed silverpitcher at a Dartmouth dinner in his honor, March 8. Dartmouth men in Minneapolisand St. Paul joined in tribute to Colonel Little who is shown above, flanked at left byHenry E. Atwood '13, at right by James H. Mullaly '05.