Little, Lora C

Lora Cornelia Little, public health activist and a descendant of the Ferris family through her maternal grandmother Ruth Ferris, was born Lora Williams, in Waterville, Minnesota Territory in 1856. She married Elijah A. Little, a civil engineer from Port Byron, N.Y. In 1895 Little's only child Kenneth died following a compulsory vaccination that was administered in advance of his admission to the Yonkers, New York public schools. She provides an account of his death in "Crimes of the Cowpox Ring", published in 1905, and crusaded against mandatory vaccinations laws for the remainder of her life. In 1918, while living in Bismark, N.D., her anti-vaccination work led to her arrest for violation of the Espionage Act.

Little, a descendant of John Ferris of Pound Ridge, N.Y. (who served as a private in the Continental Army), was admitted to the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1893. Working in collaboration with Henry Boynton Ferris of Chicago, Little immersed herself in a project to more fully document the Ferris family lineage and together they amassed extensive information on the Ferris family genealogy. When her health failed, she turned her material over to Morris Patterson Ferris. Little died in Chicago on October 30, 1931 at the age of 75.