Originally the site of the city was occupied by the Quapaw Indians. The earliest permanent settlement by the whites was about 1813-1814; the county was organized in 1818 while still a part of Missouri Territory; Little Rock was surveyed in 1821, was incorporated as a town and became the capital of Arkansas in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1836. In 1850 its population was only 2167, and in 1860 3727; but in 1870 it was 12,380. Little Rock was enthusiastically anti-Union at the outbreak of the Civil War. In February 1861, the United States Arsenal was seized by the state authorities. In September 1863 the Federal generals William Steele (1819-1885) and John W. Davidson (1824-1881), operating against General Sterling Price, captured the city, and it remained throughout the rest of the war under Federal control. Constitutional conventions met at Little Rock in 1836, 1864, 1868 and 1874, and also the Secession Convention of 1861. The _Arkansas Gazette_, established at Arkansas Post in 1819 and soon afterwards removed to the new capital, was the first newspaper published in Arkansas and one of the first published west of the Mississippi. LITTLETON (or LYTTELTON), EDWARD, BARON (1589-1645), son of Sir Edward Littleton (d. 1621) chief-justice of North Wales, was born at Munslow in Shropshire; he was educated at Oxford and became a lawyer, succeeding his father as chief-justice of North Wales. In 1625 he became a member of parliament and acted in 1628 as chairman of the committee of grievances upon whose report the Petition of Right was based. As a member of the party opposed to the arbitrary measures of Charles I. Littleton had shown more moderation than some of his colleagues, and in 1634, three years after he had been chosen recorder of London, the king attached him to his own side by appointing him solicitor-general. In the famous case about ship-money Sir Edward argued against Hampden. In 1640 he was made chief-justice of the common pleas and in 1641 lord keeper of the great seal, being created a peer as Baron Lyttelton. About this time, the lord keeper began to display a certain amount of indifference to the royal cause. In January 1642 he refused to put the great seal to the proclamation for the arrest of the five members and he also incurred the displeasure of Charles by voting for the militia ordinance. However, he assured his friend Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, that he had only taken this step to allay the suspicions of the parliamentary party who contemplated depriving him of the seal, and he undertook to send this to the king. He fulfilled his promise, and in May 1642 he himself joined Charles at York, but it was some time before he regained the favour of the king and the custody of the seal. Littleton died at Oxford on the 27th of August 1645; he left no sons and his barony became extinct. His only daughter, Anne, married her cousin Sir Thomas Littleton, Bart. (d. 1681), and their son Sir Thomas Littleton (_c._