Rare late 18th to Early 19th Century Silver Masonic “Jewel” and Print of Original Owner

Rare late 18^th to Early 19^th Century Silver Masonic “Jewel” and Print of Original Owner – This finely crafted silver Masonic “Jewel” or pendant was owned by Peter Little who served as a U.S. congressman from the state of Maryland, as well as an officer in the 38^th Maryland Infantry during the War of 1812. Little’s son, Lewis Henry Little, was a West Point graduate, who resigned his U.S. Army commission at the onset of the Civil War, to become an officer in the Confederate Army; he quickly rose to the rank of General, but was killed at the Battle of Iuka, Mississippi, in 1862.

The jewel or pendant remains in excellent condition and is hallmarked by Maryland silversmith Richard Rutter. * Accompanying this fine silver pendant is a period lithograph or engraving of Col. Little, housed in a period frame, behind original glass. We obtained the grouping directly from Col. Little’s descendants. The pendant is approximately 4.5” in height. The engraving of Little measures as follows: Frame – Height – 14”; Width – 11.75”; Sight – Height – 9”;Width – 7”.

*MARK: Base area of compass marked with script “Rutter” in an intaglio, rounded-corner rectangle.

MAKER: Richard Rutter is first listed as a gold and silversmith in the 1796 Baltimore Directory at 87 Baltimore Street. Two years prior to that listing, however, he ran a joint advertisement with Joseph Rice in the “Baltimore Daily Intelligencer” offering silver mounted swords and epaulets for sale. Rutter’s last listing in the Baltimore Directory occurs in 1798. See Jacob Hall Pleasants and Howard Sill, “Maryland Silversmiths, 1715-1830” (Baltimore, MD: Lord Baltimore Press, 1930).

Peter Little

Peter Little (December 11, 1775 – February 5, 1830) was a U.S. Representative from Maryland.

Biography

Born in Petersburg, Pennsylvania, Little attended the common schools. He initially worked as a watchmaker, until he moved to Freedom, Maryland and engaged in agricultural pursuits. He served as member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1806 and 1807.

Little was elected as a Republican to the Twelfth Congress, where he served from March 4, 1811 to March 3, 1813. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1812. During the War of 1812, Little was commissioned colonel of the Thirty-eighth Maryland Infantry and served from May 19, 1813 to June 15, 1815.

In 1817, Peter and his wife Catharine had a son named Lewis Henry Little who went on to be a Brigadier General in the American Civil War.

After the War, Little was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William Pinkney. He was reelected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses, as a Jackson Republican to the Eighteenth, and as an Adams candidate to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses, and served from September 2, 1816 to March 3, 1829. In Congress, Little served as chairman of the Committee on Accounts (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Congresses), and as a member of the Committee on Pensions and Revolutionary Claims (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses), the Committee on Revolutionary Claims (Nineteenth Congress), and the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Navy (Twentieth Congress). He declined to be a candidate for renomination.

After his tenure in Congress, Little served as judge of the orphans’ court of Baltimore County. He died in Freedom, Maryland, is interred in Freedom Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, near Eldersburg, Maryland.