Nathaniel Swett Littlefield was born in Wells, Maine on September 30, 1804.
He was a lawyer by profession having been admitted to the bar in 1827 and commencing practice in Bridgton that same year. Serving as Postmaster from 1827 to 1841 he filled many other important local offices as well.
Littlefield served as Secretary of the Maine Senate in 1831 and 1832 while Robert P. Dunlap and F.O.J. Smith were Presidents. From 1837 to 1839 he was a member of the Maine State Senate serving as President of that body in 1838.
In 1841 he was elected as a member of the Twenty-seventh Congress of the United States and elected again to the Thirty-first Congress.
The last public office he was to hold was that of Maine State Representative having been elected to the Maine House in 1854. He died in Bridgton on August 15, 1882 at the age of seventy-eight.