From CaliforniaLittles.com 

Dr. Henry Owen Little

Born on 6 May 1901 in Concord, Contra Costa, California and died on 23 Apr 1990 in Hudson, Columbia, New York, at age 88.

He was employed as a member of a survey party for the Canadian National Railway between 9 Apr 1919 and 9 Sep 1919 in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada. He arrived in northern Saskatchewan by train along with other members of the survey party. He and his mother invested almost all the money they had to purchase a canvas sleeping bag and a woolen blanket.

He worked at a Trust Company beginning about Oct 1919 and 1921 at Winnipeg. He was paid $75 per month which was increased to $90.00. He had the misfortune of cashing two checks for a customer in the amount of $375.00 which bounced. His future didn't look bright because he was required to repay the debt out of his pay. While getting a haircut in Winnipeg, the barber who he previously knew in Elgin suggested he become a doctor and according to his autobiography decided then and there in the barber's chair to be a doctor.

He said the plan was to take a course in normal school and become a teacher and then teach school and go to medical college on alternate years. He enrolled in a fifteen-week course teaching people to be country school third grade teachers. The course began September 1921 and ended December 1921. After teaching in two different country schools, he was back in Winnipeg the following August. On his first day home he met a MacLeans magazine salesman who had just sold a six-month subscription to his mother for one dollar. They had a discussion and became convinced selling subscriptions was a better way to earn money. He discontinued teaching school and put himself through pre-med and medical college selling subscriptions the next six summers for three dollars a year or five dollars for two years.

He graduated from University of Manitoba Medical College on 15 May 1929 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  Obtaining a degree from Manitoba Medical College required seven years of study, two in pre-med at the University of Manitoba, four years at the Medical College and the final year as an intern. Pre-med tuition was $50 per year and medical school tuition was $100 per year. He began at the University of Manitoba in 1922 and in the fall of 1924 entered medical college and in 1928 interned at the Misericordia Hospital.

Spent four years at other things, banking, survey parties, Loan Co. etc. Was not attracted to Medicine by financial considerations. Works his way along; sells magazines in summer (Father is a preacher, brother is a banker and helps him some). Thinks he spent too much time in Latin in premed. Zoology most useful. Botany is a biological subject. Has not found Medicine too difficult, studies 2-3 hours a night, 4-5 hrs (nights?) a week. Spends a lot of time in church work (Young Church). Reads McLean's Magazine and the Bible. Thinks the Fundamentalists are hair-brained and all at sea. Is attracted by Pediatrics and General Surgery. A good deal of time is wasted in didactic lectures because there is no practical application of the knowledge thus acquired. Would like to have opportunities of following patients through the whole course of their illness. If it were not for financial handicaps would spend his time in research - say in T.B.

After receiving his medical degree, he practiced for a while at Winnipeg and in December 1929 arranged to purchase a doctor's practice in the village of Manitou, a prosperous village a few miles from the border of North Dakota. His practice was slow and recalled that the better part of his income was derived from selling liquor prescriptions.

His mother had sent him a "Doctor Wanted" newspaper clipping April 1930 for a "municipality" doctor, Wishart, Emerald Township #277, Saskatchewan. He replied and accepted a job one hundred miles north of Regina.
Wishart was then a small village founded in 1928. There was no place to practice medicine when he arrived but there was no great need for a fully equipped doctor's office since most of his work was making house calls around the 325 square mile municipality. He did however have a small borrowed office at a grain elevator which was not very convenient, no running water and only a chair and table for furniture. His salary was $375.00 a month and earned a little extra by treating patients outside the municipality and selling pills, tonics and cod liver oil.

Later the village counselors arranged to have an old meeting house moved to a lot on the main street and to sell him the lot and also two adjacent 50 foot lots. It was a rough building about eighty feet square with a potbellied stove. The building did not lend itself very well to being a doctor's office so he had a house-office combination constructed to the rear and used the meeting house as a waiting room. During the next six years he tended to the medical needs of the municipality. He delivered about 700 babies as during that time the birth rate was so high that half of the population was under the age of 15. He was required to periodically examine over 2000 children and keep them vaccinated. During a cold spell one winter a case of smallpox occurred in the next municipality requiring a rush job getting all the children and others vaccinated. One afternoon he visited a two room country school with 120 students. Two seventh grade girls swabbed arms with alcohol while he vaccinated. He had to work fast because his teamster had to keep the horses moving in the 40 below zero weather (there was no barn). He finished the job in one hour.

Social life was limited but he did keep company of a pretty doctor's daughter named Marjorie who lived in a village about forty miles away. They met in December 1930. She was seventeen and played the piano and they more or less went steady for about five years. There wasn't much to do; they went to country dances, go to her place and sing a few songs, drive around the country, etc. In December 1940 he visited her in Vancouver.

He would send money home to Winnipeg to support his mother and brother Robert who was attending Manitoba Medical College. When Robert graduated Jun 1936, the need to send money decreased. Desiring to get away from the edge of civilization, he resigned his position at Wishart and returned to Winnipeg with the intent of starting a practice there without much success. In September 1936 he left for England to study ophthalmology. He went back to Wishart in 1978 for the town's centennial celebration and was greeted as a "special guest".

At the 1931 Census of Canada he was age 30, employed as a municipal doctor, $5000 annual income, enumerated at the hamlet of Wishart, Saskatchewan. 261 Also enumerated at residence [probably as visitors] were his mother, Emily Marie Little, age 60 and brother Robert Herriot Little, age 27, a Manitoba college student on vacation. At age 35, accompanied by his mother, he sailed to England from Montreal on the ship Dutchess of York and arrived 26 Sep 1936 at the Port of Liverpool, proposed address in the UK; 11 Ormiston Rd., New Brighton.  He began a six-month course in ophthalmology at Moorfields Hospital, London. In May 1937 he became a house surgeon at the Royal Westminster Eye Hospital for 18 months ending October 1938 and then for six weeks was temporary chief ophthalmologist to the British army. While in England he also visited relatives in Ireland. He and mother returned to the United States on the Empress of Britain arriving 22 Dec 1938 at the Port of New York.

He worked as an Ophthalmologist between 1939 and 1945 at New York, , New York. He had agreed to take a position with the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital located at 140 East 54th Street. Before starting however, he and his mother returned to Winnipeg to see about things he had left in storage and visit sister, Dora. Upon return to New York City he had to take a lengthy New York Medical Board exam to get licensed. It also took nine months of bureaucracy to establish his American citizenship even though he was born in California. He was on the surgical staff of the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital and also on the staff of St Luke's Hospital. His starting pay was $300 per month. In December, 1940, he went to Vancouver, British Columbia, for ten days to visit an old girlfriend without telling the chief surgeon and was fired soon after his return. He then set up his own practice in the same building.

He resided at 98-120 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills between 1940 and 1942 at New York, Queens, New York. At the 1940 census he was age 38 and listed as head of household, renting at $85/month. Also at residence were mother Emily (age 70) and brother Robert (age 36).

He was a Deacon in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.  The minister was John Sutherland Bonnell (known as "Sid"), a Canadian, who previously preached at Winnipeg. Rev Bonnell had built up the church to become one of the wealthiest Presbyterian churches in the world. Dr. Bonnell was born 1893 on Prince Edwards Island, Canada, died 1992 aged 99 at Roseburg, Oregon. Enlisted in Canadian Army in World War One, wounded twice in Europe, ordained in 1922. Gained a national reputation in his 26 years (1935 - 1962) as Pastor, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, sometimes called the "cathedral of Presbyterianism". He was a moderate theologically and an ardent supporter of the Rev. Billy Graham's first New York "crusade" in 1957. President of the New York Theological Seminary 1966 - 1969.

He was a member of the "Canadian Society" where met interesting people.

Beginning in 1943 he was spending one or two days a week in Hudson, New York, helping his brother Robert who had recently taken over a medical practice. 499 He had rented an apartment at 308 E. 79th Street in Oct 1944. In the spring of 1945 he gave up his New York City practice and moved to Hudson to join his brother where he conducted a successful thirty-year medical practice in Ophthalmology located at 455 Warren Street.

After his marriage to Jane Hoffmann and honeymoon, he rented an apartment for several months in June 1944 in a house located on Route 9H at Claverack, New York, about three miles from Hudson. 500 They returned to New York City December 1944 driving the Taconic Parkway, a day after a major snow storm, where their first child was born. Rather than immediately returning to Columbia County he sublet an apartment at Gramacy Park and 19th Street. In March 1945 he rented a brick cottage at Greenport just outside Hudson.

He had a residence between Mar 1947 and Dec 1960 at Claverack, Columbia, New York. 209 He resided at "The Gables" between 7 Dec 1960 and 1978 at Kinderhook, Columbia, New York. "The Gables" is a Dutch colonial house which was heavily renovated and enlarged in 1928. The original house was built in 1729 by an early settler to the area named Van Allen on land purchased from the local Native Americans. A brother built a similar house one mile east on the other side of Kinderhook Creek which has been restored to its original condition and presently a National Historic landmark.

He moved back to Hudson in 1978 to a rented apartment at 356 Union Street, near his office where he lived alone.

In 1980 he purchased an old [1836] Greek revivial house on upper [738] Warren Street. The first floor was converted to an office plus a one room studio apartment where he lived. Various family members lived in the second floor apartment, most of the time his daughter Elizabeth and her son Seth. By 1980 his medical practice had declined and eventually lost his medical license by which time he had only a few patients