Edward Cole Littleton was born in 1906 to Caucasian parents, Edward Lewis Littleton and Nora Virginia Bennett, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of Littleton's parents came from Maryland families. His father and namesake was a railroad engineer. He was the youngest of five siblings– Nellie, who died at just two years old in 1893, Grace, Louis, and Howard (“Harry” for short)– all of which were born only two years apart. Edward broke the pattern, born nine years after Harry. They lived together in Baltimore’s Ward 24, likely as a part of the growing middle class community around Edmondson Avenue as the city’s population swelled due to the Great Migration and industrial jobs attracting workers to cities.
Littleton and his family eventually moved to western Philadelphia, near Cobbs Creek Park, where his father continued to work in the rail industry as a conductor and his brother Howard began working in a shipyard. As a teenager, the working-class experiences of his father and brother may have influenced the development of his beliefs as he eventually joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in his late twenties. In 1923, Littleton’s mother passed away, and his father quickly remarried Annie Elverda Angerman. Just a year later, Edward moved to New York City to study engineering at Columbia University. He left Columbia after three years but stayed near the city, at one point living with a couple and a few other roomers in New Jersey while working as a “clerk man.”
By 1935, as tensions in Spain were heating up, Littleton had moved back to the city and joined CPUSA. Living on 331 West 24th Street during the thirties, Littleton must have seen the intense impacts of the Great Depression first hand, as the neighborhood of Chelsea depended heavily on the industry connected to the Hudson River ports and freight rail terminals. CPUSA, founded in 1919 when it split from the Socialist Party following the Russian Revolution, was (ironically) capitalizing off the economic frustration of the Depression, gaining membership while promoting an egalitarian vision of America and going even further than the New Deal. When war broke out in Spain, CPUSA raised money for medical supplies and helped organize its members to form the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fight against fascism with the Spanish Republic. With help from CPUSA, Littleton received his passport on March 25, 1937 and sailed to Spain just 6 days later aboard the Aquitania.
When he arrived in Spain on April 24, 1937, Littleton was assigned to Artillery in the 11th Regiment, 2nd Group, 14th Battery known as the “John Brown Battery.” The battery consisted of 70 men total, 49 of which were Americans. Though the Spanish Republic publicly lauded the international brigades, their American status proved to be a challenge where they were trained at Almansa, a military base east of Albacete. The base was largely led by “criminally ineffective” Frenchmen without much interest in training American soldiers. Major Paul Maurice, a former officer in the French Army during WWI, served as commander and instructed officers to teach the inexperienced soldiers “theoretical strategy” and not let them touch guns. Not only that, French soldiers received preferential treatment and were the only ones allowed to venture outside the barracks at night. This ultimately led to Maurice’s removal when it was discovered that non-French soldiers had not been released during air attack on the base.
Despite these circumstances, Littleton may have received some training from one of the French base leaders, Lieutenant Maurice Tavlitsky. Fluent in English and coming from Jewish descent, Tavlitsky may have connected more with the Jewish members of the international brigades (which were numerous, as fascism and Hitler proved more of an existential threat to them than anyone else). He trained Americans in secret and faked reports to base leaders. When two 155mm guns that had been sold to the Spanish Republic by the Soviet Union arrived at the base in the Fall of 1937, Littleton received more training in setting up wooden ramps and dry firing the guns.
In October of 1937, the John Brown Battery was sent west to Badajoz, the city of Villanueva de la Serrana, on the Estremadura Front, and shortly after back east to the Toledo Front. The John Brown Battery arrived to both of these fronts after the Nationalists had largely moved their campaign further north and saw little combat. The city of Toledo was taken by the Nationalists in 1936 following the Siege of Alcázar, so Littleton and those also stationed near Toledo were focused on defending Madrid from the south. Littleton attained the rank of Sergeant and remained near Toledo until the brigade’s repatriation in 1938. On September 21, 1938, Littleton set sail for home aboard the Ile de France.
Littleton arrived back in the United States at age 32 and returned to his home state of Maryland. He lived again as a lodger in another family’s home in Catonsville where he worked for a modest salary as a superintendent of textile manufacturing. A record from 1940 indicates he was married but not to whom; all further records listed him as single. His affiliation with the Communist Party and time in Spain likely followed him throughout his life. Littleton was named in multiple US intelligence documents including “The Scope of Soviet Activity,” and may have come under fire during the Second Red Scare. He eventually moved to San Francisco and died at age 59 on July 8, 1965. He is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, California.
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“Littleton, Edward Cole.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Accessed May 2, 2025. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/edward-cole-littleton/.
Brooks, Chris, and Liana Katz. “Blast from the Past: Artillery Series.” The Volunteer, July 2015. Accessed May 2 , 2025. https://albavolunteer.org/2015/07/blast-from-the-past-artillery-series/.
“Edward Littleton (d. 1558).” Find A Grave Memorial no. 87722839. Accessed May 2, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87722839/edward-littleton.
Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Accessed May 6, 2025. https://www.ancestry.com.
Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Accessed May 6, 2025. https://www.ancestry.com.
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Accessed May 6, 2025. https://www.ancestry.com.
Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Accessed May 6, 2025. https://www.ancestry.com.
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States: Volumes 21–23. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, Eighty-fourth Congress, second session. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956–1959. Accessed May 6, 2025. https://archive.org/stream/ScopeOfSovietActivityInTheUnitedStates/Scope%20of%20Soviet%20activity%20in%20the%20United%20States%20Volumes%2021-23_djvu.txt.:contentReference[oaicite:8]{index=8}