Steven Butler's Family History Website

BIOGRAPHIES INDEX

Biographies

The Butler Family: Beginnings
PART ONE

By Steven R. Butler

Alfred Butler, a veteran of the war with Mexico and a pioneer settler of Texas, was born about 1824 in Bertie County, North Carolina. Nothing is known about the first twenty-two years of his life. Even the names of his parents have been obscured by the passage of time. As a result, the origins of the family into which he was born are uncertain. Yet evidence, however slight, suggests that at least one ancestor may have come from England or Northern Ireland to America nearly two hundred years earlier.

In 1607, the first permanent English settlement in America, Jamestown, was established in Virginia. The decades which followed saw thousands of ordinary men and women crossing the Atlantic Ocean in tiny wooden ships, hoping for a better life in the "New World." In 1652, one of those anonymous little vessels, perhaps one which regularly transported people and supplies from mother country to colony, arrived off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Doubtless, after the long six-to-eight week voyage, its passengers rejoiced at the sight of land. Today, in this era of jet travel, in which people can fly from Great Britain to America in less than eight hours in comfort and safety, it's difficult to imagine the hardships seventeenth-century immigrants had to endure. Nearly constant seasickness, bad food made worse by contamination with worms or rat-droppings, cramped sleeping quarters, stagnant drinking water, and the gnawing fear that the ship might never reach its destination all combined to make the crossing a living nightmare.

So why did they come? Why did so many people leave the relative safety of their homeland and venture west across the ocean, bound for a wilderness inhabited by strange creatures and a race of "Indians" who were often hostile to their coming? The answer, just as it would be for their descendants, for many generations yet to come, was simple: LAND.

In Seventeenth century England, an overpopulated country whose cities and towns were teeming with masses of the chronically unemployed, all the best lands had long ago been taken by the upper classes. As a result, the chance that an ordinary Englishman might rise above his station in life was remote. But in Virginia, each new immigrant was entitled to a headright of fifty acres, with the only requirement being that he go there!

For the poorest of the poor, unable to raise the £6 fare for passage across the Atlantic, even this opportunity would have been lost but for the labor shortage then being suffered by Virginia's tobacco plantations. Recruited by colonial agents nicknamed "spirits" (because they "spirited" people away to America), would-be immigrants, generally the young, poor and male, were persuaded to sign a contract, or "indenture," the terms of which bound them to work for a set period of time (usually from four to seven years) for the colonial landowner who agreed to pay the immigrant's passage to Virginia. Thus were these laborers known as "indentured servants."

The colonial landholder benefited doubly. Not only did he obtain an immigrant's labor for several years but for every servant he brought over, the landholder received the fifty acres to which each transported person would have been entitled had he paid his own way. Yet the servant still had hope that he might better himself. After serving out his indenture, he too could obtain property in the same manner. By saving his money he might also be able to pay the passage of some other poor immigrant - and in the process, not only obtain a quantity of land but be transformed from servant to master in the blink of an eye, an opportunity for economic and social advancement unheard of in his native land.

Aboard that little ship approaching the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in 1652 were seven indentured servants whose passage had been paid by a man named George Ashall. A textbook example of how the system was meant to work, Ashall himself had come to Virginia in 1641 as one of twenty-three servants transported by Ambrose Bennett of Isle of Wight County, for which act Bennett had received from Virginia's colonial government a land patent granting him 1,150 acres. Eleven years later, Ashall was a free man settled in Lower Norfolk County, where he surely anticipated taking possession of the 350 acres to which he was entitled, by virtue of the arrival of his seven new servants, a woman and six men, one of whom may have been the ancestor of Alfred Butler.

The notion that Leven Butler, one of George Ashall's newly-arrived indentured servants, might have been a kinsman six or seven generations removed from Alfred Butler, is, for the present, only conjecture. No evidence has yet been found to link the two men. The coincidence of the Englishman's given name - a name which appears with some regularity among the Butlers of Bertie County, North Carolina, along with his presence in an area from which North Carolina's early population is known to have been drawn, are the only clues giving rise to this presumption.

At any rate, whether future research confirms or disproves a relationship, it's nearly certain that Alfred Butler's earliest ancestor to arrive on this continent was someone like Leven Butler, who, when he first glimpsed the coast of Virginia on that long-ago day in 1652 was probably a young man - the average age of new immigrants being twenty-three years. It can be imagined that upon arrival, he and his companions, Richard Walker, Thomas Choswell, John Banks, Raffe Synes, and Mary Storey, were all met and taken in charge by their new master and that within days, could be found in the tobacco fields they'd been brought some three thousand miles in which to labor.

Unfortunately for Leven Butler and his companions, tending tobacco in Seventeenth century Tidewater Virginia was probably more dangerous to an individual's health than smoking it is now known to be. Thomas J. Wertenbacker, a modern author who has written extensively about early-day Virginia, says:

...to the indentured settler of the Seventeenth century, his arrival in the James or York [rivers] was but the beginning of his struggles. Before he could grasp the riches of the New World, he must pay the price of his passage, must work out through arduous years the indenture to which he had affixed his signature. And these years were filled not only with toil, perhaps with hardship, but with the greatest peril. He might account himself fortunate indeed if during the first twelve months he escaped the so-called Virginia sickness. Tidewater Virginia for the English settlers was a pest-ridden place. The low and marshy ground, the swarming mosquitoes, the hot sun, the unwholesome drinking water combined to produce an unending epidemic of dysentery and malaria. And at frequent intervals, especially in the early years, yellow fever, scurvy and plague swept over the infant colony, leaving behind a ghastly train of suffering and death.

If the immigrant Leven Butler survived his "seasoning," as this initial period of acclimatization was called, he doubtless would have gone on to work out his indenture, which would have expired sometime between 1656 and 1659. At that time, as a free man, he had the option of continuing as a laborer for wages, becoming a tenant farmer, or becoming a proprietor - a landowner in his own right. Although the expiration of his indenture did not entitle him by law to receive any land from the colonial government, he might have looked to his former master, writes Wertenbaker, to supply him with a gift of land, or, at the very least, with "the equipment necessary for his new life." This could include clothing, a gun, some tools, and perhaps some seed.

What actually became of Leven Butler is uncertain but the colonial deed records of Lower Norfolk County, Virginia for the year 1695 record the name of a man named Tobias Butler, who may have been his son or grandson. And in 1704, the rent rolls of neighboring Nansemond County include a John Butler on 200 acres, a James Butler on 75 acres, an Elizabeth Butler on 200 acres, and a William Butler on 120 acres. But whether or not they were descended from the immigrant Englishmen is equally uncertain.

Both Nansemond County and Norfolk County ("Lower" was dropped from the name many years ago) are located immediately adjacent to North Carolina, their southern boundaries making up a portion of the imaginary line which separates Virginia from its neighbor. On the other side of that line, less than fifty miles to the southwest, lies Bertie County, North Carolina. Located at the western end of that shallow body of water known as Albermarle Sound, Bertie County was organized in 1722. Since 1774, the town of Windsor has been the county seat. Only a few miles to the east, along the coast, lies Roanoake Island - where England's first attempt to colonize the "New World" ended in failure. The sands of Kitty Hawk, where two bicycle shop owners from Ohio named Orville and Wilbur Wright later flew the world's first self-propelled airplane, are also nearby.

When English colonization of North America began during the late Sixteenth century, North Carolina was originally part of that vast expanse of land lying between the 34th and 45th parallels that Sir Walter Raleigh dubbed "Virginia," in honor of Queen Elizabeth I. Later, in 1663, Charles II granted "Carolina" to eight friends who helped him gain the throne following the death of Oliver Cromwell. They were given the title of "Lords Proprietors" of the colony. Named after the king himself (the Latin form of Charles is Carolus), it stretched from the present-day Virgina-North Carolina state line to Spanish Florida. Nominally split into two parts in 1691, the division between North and South Carolina became official in 1712.

Because the colony's treacherous Outer Banks and the shoals of Albermarle Sound made water travel hazardous, the region which included Bertie County was populated not directly by immigrants from England but "second-hand" by Virginians, most frequently those resident in the counties immediately adjacent - namely Surry, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, and Lower Norfolk. Not infrequently, a number of these early settlers were indentured servants who had run away from their masters. Others were free men who had arrived in Virginia as such or had fulfilled the terms of an indenture. After 1680, when Negro slavery began to take root in Virginia, the number of small farmers leaving the colony increased considerably. Unable to compete economically with the rich planters - with their vast land holdings and hundreds of slaves, many went to North Carolina.

Because North Carolina became a magnet for those who had difficulty achieving economic success in the parent colony, some Virginians looked with disfavor on their neighbors to the south, ascribing their lack of material progress to character flaws rather than economic disadvantages. Author Thomas Wertenbaker has perpetuated this view, writing that:

Of the thousands of servants whose criminal instincts or lack of industry made it impossible for them to become prosperous citizens, great numbers left the colony. Many went to North Carolina. As Virginia had served as a dumping ground for the refuse of the English population, so did this new colony furnish a vent for undesirable persons from Virginia.

Providing support for this opinion, William Byrd II, a prominent Virginian of the time, had little good to say about his North Carolinian neighbors, writing:

The men...just like the Indians, impose all the work upon the poor women. They make their wives rise out of their beds early in the morning, at the same time that they lye and snore, til the sun has run one third of his course...Then, after stretching and yarning for half an hour, they light their pipes, and, under the protection of a cloud of smoak, venture out into the open air; tho' if it happens to be never so little cold, they quickly return shivering into the chimney corner...Thus they loiter away their lives, like Solomon's sluggard, with their arms across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely have bread to eat. To speak the truth, tis a thorough aversion to labor that makes people file off to North Carolina, where plenty and a warm sun confirm them in their disposition to laziness for their whole lives.

Certainly, there may have been colonists living in North Carolina like those described by Byrd but it seems unlikely that all its citizens had an aversion to labor, else North Carolina's tobacco plantations (emulating those of Virginia) and its industries, most notably the production of timber and naval stores, would not have prospered - as they did especially after the colony came under royal rule in 1729. During the Eighteenth century, seven-tenths of all the tar, more than half the turpentine, and one-fifth of the pitch exported from all its colonies to Great Britain came from North Carolina.

The first white settler to obtain legal title to land in the Albermarle Sound region was twenty-five year old George Durant, who migrated south from his native Virgina in 1659. Other Virginians soon followed, and like Durant, took title to the land not from the Crown but from its original Native American owners. There, in fields previously cleared by the Indians, they cultivated tobacco - the plant they hoped would bring them the wealth it had brought others.

Alfred Butler's ancestors may have been among the thousand or so men of English origin who migrated into the Albermarle Sound region of North Carolina during this period, where they were isolated from Virginia by the Great Dismal Swamp to the north and from England by the risk-filled shoals of the North Carolina coast. "For more than a generation," writes modern-day author Franklin Folsom, "together with their wives and children, [they] lived beyond the control of any outside agency," adding:

...quietly, the men of Albermarle governed themselves in a kind of Utopia which for them lacked little that tobacco planters could achieve in the seventeenth century - except wealth. They were probably among the poorest farmers in America, but the fault was not lack of spirit on their part. Their soil was not the best for tobacco growing. Also the price at which tobacco could be sold was often very low.

For nearly three decades the people of Albermarle continued living in this way, engaging in trade with New England merchants - whose shallow-draft coastal vessels were ideally suited to the shallow waters of the Sound, or hauling their harvest overland to Virginia, from there to be shipped overseas. And although they were poor, the North Carolinians kept what money they earned, paying no fees to support churches (as Virginians did) and no taxes to any government. Indeed, when a royal tax collector tried to do his duty, after Parliament passed a law in 1672 laying a penny per pound tax on all tobacco shipped to any place other than England, the farmers of Albermarle rebelled, refusing to pay and foiling all attempts by the taxman to force the issue.

It was inevitable, however, that this situation would not remain forever unchanged. As the Seventeenth century gave way to the Eighteenth, more and more settlers moved into the region and with them came more control by royal authorities.

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy events to occur in America during the early years of the Eighteenth century was the Tuscarora Indian War of 1711-1713, one of the last attempts by an eastern North Carolina tribe to oust the region's white settlers. Their failure to do so, combined with the subsequent removal of most of the tribe to the colony of New York, was surely a factor in North Carolina's population increase. This, in turn, eventually led to the division of the colony's original three counties into smaller administrative districts. Albermarle County, for example, had been created in 1663. Over the years, it was partitioned again and again, until by 1739 it had ceased to exist altogether. Taking its place were numerous new counties, including Bertie - created from the larger Chowan County in 1722. Bertie, in turn, was gradually reduced in size as it gave up territory to form even smaller counties: Edgecombe, Northampton, and Tyrrell.

The earliest evidence of a person bearing the name Butler residing in Bertie County is a deed concerning one Jeffrey Butler who, on February 9, 1722 - the same year the county was first organized, paid £6 for 100 acres of land on Jumping Run, a local stream. Between 1722 and 1757, there were a number of other people bearing the surname Butler whose land transactions were recorded in the deed books of Bertie County. Among these were Elizabeth Butler, Jacob Butler, Jethro Butler (eight entries), John Butler (sixteen entries), Rachell Butler, Richard Butler, Robert Butler, Sarah Butler, and William Butler.

Other early county records name Robert Butler, who was included in the 1757 tax rolls. Four years later, the will of Jethro Butler was probated in Bertie County and Ann Butler and Martha Butler are listed on the county tax rolls for 1769.

In 1774, the year preceding the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, a William Butler was listed on the Bertie County tax rolls. In 1781, the year the war came to an end, the county tax rolls named John Butler, Joseph Butler, Robert Butler, Tobias Butler, and William Butler (probably the brother of Tobias and the same William listed in 1774).

The 1787 state census for Bertie County enumerated only John Butler but the first ever Federal Census, of 1790, found that the residents of Bertie County included three men named John Butler, two named Isaac Butler, two named William Butler, and one each of Tobias Butler, Jeremiah Butler, Arther Butler, Joseph Butler, and Thomas R. Butler.

Tobias Butler, it appears, was a prosperous Bertie County planter, born sometime during the 1730's. About 1753 he was married to a woman named Keziah, whose maiden name is unknown. Together, they had at least six children: John, born about 1754; Jethro, born 1761; and Elizabeth, Polly (or Mary), William, and Simon - all born after Jethro but sometime before 1790. All his children, in addition to a brother named William and a nephew, Samuel, are named in Tobias Butler's 1791 will, on file in the Bertie County courthouse at Windsor. The document also mentions a niece, Tempty Harrell - "daughter of Jesse Harrell, deceased," and a sister Hester Raby, wife of Luke Raby. The large amounts of land Tobias Butler left to each of his sons in his will, combined with the fact that he owned no less than 25 Negro slaves together provide ample evidence he was a wealthy man.

In 1775 the American colonists rose up in revolt against the British Crown, an event which led to the transformation of North Carolina from British colony into one of the thirteen original United States. Official records of both the Federal government and the State of North Carolina provide evidence that several Bertie County Butlers were soldiers in the Patriot cause and that two, John Butler and Jethro Butler (presumably sons of Tobias Butler), lived long enough to receive federal pensions under the Acts of 1818 and 1820.

Unfortunately, it is not always obvious to which soldier some records refer. For example, according to muster rolls housed in the North Carolina state archives, two Bertie County citizens, John Butler and Isaac Butler (presumably kinsmen), enlisted at Windsor on May 5, 1776 as privates in Baker's company, 10th North Carolina regiment - commanded by Colonel Abraham Shepard. After serving for almost exactly two years, Isaac was mustered out of service on May 8, 1779 with John being mustered out later the same year.

However, when John Butler, a sixty-six year old resident of Bertie County, applied for a Federal pension on November 17, 1820, he recalled that he enlisted "on or about 4 May 1776 for a 2½ year term at Windsor in said county" but stated that he had served in "Captain Jeremiah McLayen or McLean's company in the Regiment commanded by Col. Thomas Polk in the North Carolina line" adding that he "fought in the Battle of Charleston, S.C. and was discharged at Halifax, N.C. at the expiration of his term." Obviously, this raises certain questions: Was this the same John Butler who enlisted and served with Isaac Butler, and who, after the passage of many years, had simply confused the names of the officers under whom he served? Or was he, by coincidence, a different man with the same name? Although the company and regiment are different in the two records, the fact that the place of enlistment is the same, and the date nearly so, makes it difficult to determine.

For what it's worth, John Butler's 1820 pension application also records that he had earlier "received a pension under the Act of 1818 commencing on the 24th April 1818" and includes a statement in which he listed his meager assets. "I have [no] other income than...220 acres of poor barren, piney, marshy, wet, flat land valued by the assessors at 50 cents per acre," he wrote, adding that he also owned "3 cows - 3 calves - 1 Heifer - 1 Small horse 14 years old - [and] 22 head of small hogs." This inventory was followed by a list of his family members, "6 persons including himself...his wife Milly, aged 50 years, infirm ∓ can do but little work...Temperence his daughter aged 18 years who works for herself...Sucky his daughter aged 14 years - able to maintain herself, William his son aged about 16 years able to maintain himself...Abigail his daughter aged 8 years who can do but little towards getting a living."

Unfortunately, the mention of a wife named Milly only adds further confusion. On December 27, 1797, according to Bertie County records, John Butler (spelled Buttler in the record) was married to Kezee Pritchard, with Christopher Pritchard, presumably Kezee's brother, acting as bondsman. Again, a question arises: Was John Butler, the Revolutionary War veteran, married twice, with the second marriage going unrecorded? Or do these records refer to two different men? Again, it is difficult to know with certainty.

One thing which is certain is that there were indeed two Jethro Butlers who served in the Revolutionary War and who, by coincidence, were both born in Bertie County, North Carolina in 1761! It's likely the two men were cousins. One, who appears to have been a lifelong resident of Bertie County, enlisted "for the term of 3 years on or about the Spring of 1778...in Bertie County, North Carolina in the company commanded by Capt. Dixon in the regiment commanded by Colonel Ashe." Mustered out of service at Bacon Bridge, South Carolina in the spring of 1781, he was said to have participated in the battles of "Charleston, South Carolina, Eutaw Springs, and Guilford." Many years later, on November 14, 1820, at the age of fifty-nine, he applied for a Federal Pension under the Act of that same year, stating that he already had "a pension certificate bearing date the 5th March 1819 and has received pay from the 24th April 1818 to the 4th March 1820." Like John Butler, he listed his assets, "one sow ∓ 8 young pigs - 1 pine table - 1 axe," and named his family: "...wife Nancy, about 30 years old...Winney, his daughter about 11 years old - Isaac his son about 5 years...Robert his son about 3 yrs. ∓ John about 1 month old." Again, as in the case of John Butler, Bertie County records show only one marriage for Jethro Butler - on August 16, 1791 to Winifred Tiner, suggesting that his first wife must have died young and that the young woman named in Jethro's pension application was his second wife, their marriage going unrecorded.

The other Jethro Butler, who was residing in South Carolina when the war broke out, enlisted as a spy and fifer in a regiment from that state, serving from 1775 to 1779. He afterwards joined the militia and served to the end of the war, during which time he participated in several battles and was taken prisoner and held three months in a dungeon in St. Augustine, Florida. In later life he migrated with his family to Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, where he was living when he applied for a Federal pension. This same Jethro Butler died on April 9, 1841 and was buried at Summerfield, Louisiana.

On July 20, 1778, Joseph Butler and William Butler, presumably one of Tobias Butler's sons, enlisted as privates in Blount's company, 10th North Carolina regiment, for a period of two-and-a-half years. On the same date, Joel Butler enlisted as a private in the same regiment, Bradley's company, for a period of nine months. Simon Butler, who was very likely William Butler's brother, also served in a North Carolina regiment during the Revolutionary War but the details of his service are unknown.

At the beginning of the Nineteenth century, there were five heads-of-households bearing the surname Butler enumerated in the Federal census for Bertie County, North Carolina. These were Chloe Butler, Jethro Butler, John Butler Sr., John Butler Jr., and William Butler.

On February 13, 1802, John Butler Jr. married Mary Hubbard in Bertie County.

During the War of 1812, in which Americans fought the British for a second time, the Butlers of Bertie County could again be counted on to defend their country. Darius H. Butler was one these, volunteering to serve as a substitute for Jeremiah Bunch, who had been drafted into the militia. In Bertie County, on or about October 31, 1814, Darius was enrolled as a private in the First Regiment, North Carolina Militia, commanded by Captain C. Hugg. Although he had agreed to serve six months, Darius was mustered out at Camp Portsmouth, Virginia on February 8, 1815 - after serving only four months and six days. Because the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war, was signed on December 24, 1814, it's unlikely he participated in any battles.

Others who served from Bertie County during the War of 1812 include Curry Butler, John P. Butler, and Silas Butler. All three were privates in Jacock's company, North Carolina Detached Milita, commanded by Major-General Montfort Stokes. It's unlikely that Curry Butler was the same man bearing that name who, on January 12, 1793, married a woman named Elizabeth Phulks in Bertie County.

Apprenticeship indenture records on file in the county courthouse at Windsor reveal the occupation of many early-Nineteenth century Bertie County residents. An 1818 indenture, apprenticing a five year old boy named Dempsey Boyce to Darius Butler (spelled Derias on the indenture), shows that Butler was a cooper by trade - no doubt constructing the huge hogsheads, measuring up to 48 inches in height, which local tobacco planters needed to pack and ship their crops.

An earlier indenture, dated 1793, reveals that John Butler (son of Tobias Butler?) was a shoe-maker. A Jethro Butler, "son of Jethro Butler, decd.," was apprenticed to Jacob Kennehorn, a ship's carpenter.

The 1820 Federal census for Bertie County, North Carolina enumerated the following: Dollay Butler; George Butler; James Butler; Jethro Butler; John Butler; Martha Butler; and Rachel Butler. Of these, four are mentioned in the will of Dolly Butler (misspelled in the census), who identified John and Jethro as her brothers and Martha and Rachel as her sisters. In addition, she listed a nephew, Levin Butler, as one of her heirs. He is also named in the 1842 will of his mother, Martha Butler.

County indenture records include a contract dated August 11, 1828, in which eleven year old Moses Croft was apprenticed to Levin Butler (spelled Leven in the record), revealing that he was a cart-wheelwright by trade.

Levin Butler (again spelled Leven in the record) was married in Bertie County, on March 10th, 1827, to a woman named Harriet Mizells. The ages of his children, as shown in Federal census records, suggest this may have been his second marriage - although no record of the first appears to exist.

On February 11, 1828 William Butler was married to Miss Judah Hughes and on June 14th of that same year, Ryan Butler, who may have been Levin Butler's brother, was married to Miss Betsey Boswell.

Levin Butler was but one of fourteen people bearing the surname Butler who were listed in the 1830 Federal Census for Bertie County. The others were: Allen Butler; Amelia Butler; Benjamin Butler; Currey Butler; Darius H. Butler; Everett Butler; Jacob Butler; James Butler; Jarvis Butler; Jethro Butler; John P. Butler; Ryan Butler; and William Butler. Of these, Jethro Butler was probably the aging Revolutionary War veteran. John P. Butler, Darius Butler and Currey Butler were the War of 1812 veterans and William Butler is likely to have been the son of Revolutionary War veteran John Butler - who had probably died sometime between 1820 and 1830.


BIOGRAPHIES INDEX


This website copyright © 1996-2011 by Steven R. Butler, Ph.D. All rights reserved.