BIOGRAPHIES INDEX
Introduction to the Online Edition of A Home In Texas
By Steven R. Butler
A little more than ten years ago, when I wrote the introduction to my book A Home in Texas, I remarked that I did not consider it "the stopping point in my quest to learn my
family's history" but rather a "pause," adding that there was "still much more to be done." Since then, as time has permitted, I have continued the "quest" and I am happy to report that a little more
progress has been made, although my long-term goal of finding the first-ever member of my father's line to come to America from the "Old World" has, frustratingly, not yet been achieved.
In regard to my paternal ancestry, which is what A Home in Texas is all about, my biggest successes have been mostly in filling in gaps in information about ancestors about who I
already knew or learning new things about them. Quite a bit of this has come to me through two avenues: the World Wide Web, which was just getting started in 1994-1995, and my continuing travels.
In addition to revisiting some of the sites in the Rio Grande Valley associated with my great-great-grandfather Alfred Butler's service in the Mexican War, since 1994 I have made three
trips to Alabama, all of which were very fruitful. During the first, which occurred in 1996, my father and I visited Eutaw, the town where Alfred Butler was living when he volunteered for service in
1846. We also visited neighboring Greensboro, as well as Mobile. The following year, we returned to Eutaw, where I had the honor of addressing the Greene County Historical Society on the occasion of
the 150th anniversary of the return of the "Eutaw Rangers" from Mexico. On that same trip, we went on to Montgomery where I figuratively struck "gold" in the state archives, finding among other
things the original Mexican War diary of Sydenham Moore, Alfred Butler's commanding officer. Although it does not name him personally, it has added immensely to my knowledge of his experience of that
particular conflict. A project I undertook around the same time, to transcribe the names of all the Alabama Volunteers in the Mexican War from muster rolls on National Archives microfilm, led to the
knowledge that Alfred was hospitalized in Vera Cruz following his regiment's expedition to Alvarado, something I had never known before.
Visits to places associated with my grandmother's family - the Tates - were equally productive. In addition to courthouse research in several counties in both eastern Alabama and
western Georgia, one of the highlights of the 1997 trip was a visit, on my forty-sixth birthday, to the sleepy little town of Columbia, where my grandmother (my father's mother) was born on September
9, 1885 - not far from the banks of the slow-moving Chattahoochee River. In Columbia I saw the house of Harrison Tate - her grandfather, still standing next to the vacant lot where her immediate
family's home once stood, as well as his grave in the city cemetery. Adding to my enjoyment of the visit was the knowledge I had acquired the day before at the state archives - for example, that my
grandmother's grandfather was mayor of the town when she was born! And that her father Isaac, a Columbia dry goods merchant, suffered a fire that adversely affected his business. Knowing all these
things, combined with the fact that Columbia appeared to be little changed from the time the Tates lived there, made it easier for me to travel back in time in my head and imagine what life was like
there in the late nineteenth century.
On a more recent visit, in the summer of 2004, I showed my son Benjamin the town of Eutaw and in Georgia he helped me find the grave of my grandmother's grandmother (Mary C. Tate)
in a little country cemetery in Harris County, something I had not had time to do on my earlier visit. We also found the grave of my grandmother's uncle, Thomas Tate, in Columbus, Georgia. But
without a doubt, the most memorable part of the trip, at least for me, was our visit to neighboring Meriwether County. As we drove along a country lane, looking for the plantation that our ancestor
Neill Strahan had owned before the Civil War, I remarked that it would really be something if we found a house like something out of Gone with the Wind on the property, but certainly did not expect
to actually find one. Imagine my surprise when we did, and stopped to speak to its present occupants! (I must add that we are not 100 percent certain the house we found belonged to Neill -
although there is a strong possibility it was his, being built in 1831, the year he moved to Meriwether County from elsewhere in Georgia).
On another more recent trip, to Vernon, Texas in the summer of 2002, I found the house in which my grandmother's sister, Hettie, had lived - the one my father remembers visiting as
a child, as well as Hettie's grave and those of her husband, her children and their families - not to mention the grave of my grandmother's infant sister, who died in Vernon in 1890.
The World Wide Web has been a real boon. A family history web site I launched in 1996 has put me in contact with relatives I didn't even know I had. Not the least of these are some Tate cousins who live in Southeast Texas. The information I
obtained from them finally helped clear up a long unanswered question: Why did my great-grandfather Isaac Tate and his family visit two towns in East Texas (Jacksonville and San Marcos) not long
after their arrival from Alabama? The answer, which had never occurred to me, was that a brother and a sister had migrated to Texas before him and so of course, he stopped to see them. I still do not
know, however, what prompted him to go to Vernon (where the Tates stayed for two years) nor do I have any clue as to what led to their decision to come to Dallas in 1890.
Although these successes have been gratifying I have also been frustrated by my inability to trace a single member of my paternal "family tree" back to Europe. I am especially
desirous of finding the "Old World" origins of the Butler family, but I have been halted in that effort by my failure (so far) to determine the identities of the parents of my great-great-grandfather
Alfred Butler, who has born, reportedly, in Bertie County, North Carolina in 1824. Sadly, apart from a visit to the grave of the woman I believe may have been his mother (in Greensboro, Alabama) I
really have nothing more to go on that I did in 1994.
In one way, hitting this figurative "brick wall" has been of some positive value. Discouraged by a lack of progress in my paternal line, in the late 1990s I began to make a more
concerted effort to research my mother's side of the family and by good fortune, made some remarkable and completely unexpected finds. Ironically, having so far failed to learn who any my father's
emigrant ancestors were, I have in the intervening years discovered several of my mother's and in some cases, have even learned the names of the ships and circumstances that brought them to America
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries! Now if I could be half as successful in my paternal line, I think I would be very happy indeed.
Anyone reading this online version of A Home in Texas should be aware that one of the things which I have not yet had time to do is to incorporate any of my post-1994 findings into
it. While I hope to do this at my earliest opportunity, it may be some time before I can, owing to the fact that I have so many other unfinished and more pressing projects to complete
first.
In the meantime, I hope that by putting this book online (which I probably should have done years ago!), it will be of both use and interest to those with who I share one or more
common ancestors.
In closing, I should probably point out that this online edition is slightly expurgated, primarily by the exclusion of material pertaining to individuals alive today (in order to protect their privacy).
Steven Butler
January 2, 2005
BIOGRAPHIES INDEX
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