Monday, October 24, 2016

IGNATIOUS BUTLER Born Oct 2, 1755 Monongalia Co Virginia was NOT the Son of Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER & DORCAS ABBOTT of New Hampshire

Here's a little horror story of how one error in one family tree can spread online like wildfire.

My great x 5 grandfather Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER was born April 6, 1729 Windham, Connecticut, died  Dec 29, 1804 Nottingham Rockingham Co New Hampshire. He married DORCAS ABBOTT April 17, 1754 in Andover, Essex Co Massachusetts.

This BENJAMIN BUTLER was the son of MALACHI BUTLER & JEMIMA DAGGETT, of Edgarstown, Dukes Co Massachusetts (Martha's Vineyard).  The family also lived for a time in Connecticut, where BENJAMIN was born.

This BENJAMIN BUTLER graduated from Harvard with  a Bachelor of Arts in 1752, and a Master's degree in 1758.  He was ordained as a minister, and that was his profession for most of his life. He & his family moved after 1758 to Rockingham Co New Hampshire.

This BENJAMIN BUTLER & his wife DORCAS ABBOTT  were NOT the parents of IGNATIOUS BUTLER who was born Oct 1755 supposedly in England, and died in Bath Co Kentucky.

Sadly, I have seen over a hundred online trees with this error, particularly on Ancestry.com.

And how do I know this is incorrect?  I spent over two years researching the BENJAMIN BUTLER & DORCAS ABBOTT family & the BUTLER pedigree for application to the Society of Mayflower Descendants.  My application & pedigree were accepted as correct in 2011.

Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER left a will which was probated Jan 10, 1805 Nottingham, Rockingham Co New Hampshire and in it he lists his 2nd wife PHEBE, son HENRY BUTLER, and two daughters MARY (who married ABRAHAM BROWN) and DORCAS (who married JONATHAN CILLEY).

Here is a scanned copy of the will of Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER



 Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER had no connection whatsoever to Virginia, and was in fact attending Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1755 when IGNATIOUS BUTLER was born in Virginia.

A quick check of Massachusetts birth records & published genealogies shows that BENJAMIN & DORCAS BUTLER never had a son named IGNATIOUS.

Sources:
--"History of Martha's Vineyard" by Dr Charles Bank Vol III p 17-66;
--"Ancestors of Gen Benjamin Franklin Butler" by Blanche Butler Ames;
--"History of Northfield New Hampshire" by Lucy Cross, page 29-31;
--"History of the Town of Canterbury New Hampshire 1727-1912" by James Otis Lyford p 43;
--"Lineage Book of the Hereditary Order of Descendants of Colonial Governors" by Robert Glenn Thurtle;
--"Lineage Book, National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution DAR, Vol 31" by DAR page 311, lineage of NELLIE PRESCOTT BROWN
--"Genealogy and Family History of the State of Maine Vol 4" by Burrage & Stubbs p 1731, section of BUTLER & ABBOTT
--" Register of the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the District of Columbia 1970" (BUTLER lineage registered by JOHN HENRY BRONSON SMITH)
--appears on several different lists from Harvard University.
--An detailed biography appears in "Colonial Collegians"by Conrad Edick Wright, published 2005. See the NEHGS website, American Ancestry. 

Please refer to my Ancestry.com tree "New England Ancestors of Ruby Bolton Brown"  profile page for Rev BENJAMIN BUTLER

Or, if you don't have a subscription, here is the Rootsweb.com version

Have a great day!

Betty

© Betty Tartas  2016

1 comment:

Leslie Butler said...

As a documented descendant of Ignatious BUTLER through his son Nathan BUTLER I have to agree with you and thank you for the excellent and accurate research. I did my Y-DNA with Family Tree DNA and have a confirmed haplogroup R-FT137546. Through diligent effort, I contacted other descendants and relatives of Ignatious Butler. There is one other holder of the same confirmed haplogroup and he is a descendant of Ignatious' first son Jesse BUTLER. Ignatious kept a small notebook which implied that he had a brother named Ciifford. Clifford moved to Kentucky and settled along the Ohio River. A descendant of Clifford BUTLER has a confirmed haplogroup of R-FT137024. Now this haplogroup is an ancestor of R-FT137546 and it is highly probable that Ignatious BUTLER was the originator of the mutation that established R-FT137546. Right now we believe that the parents of Ignatious BUTLER were Nathan BUTLER and Rachel DENBO married in St. John's Parish, Baltimore County in October 1754.