William Butler

Lieutenant Colonel William Butler (died 1789) was a Pennsylvania officer during the American Revolutionary War, known for his leadership in the Battle of Monmouth, the burning of the Indian villages at Unadilla and Oquaga, and in the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition.

Butler's exact year of birth is unknown, but he was probably born in the mid-1740s. His family emigrated from Ireland sometime before 1760 and settled in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. In the late 1760s he worked as a frontier fur trader near Pittsburgh with his brother Richard.

He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army upon the formation of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment on October 25, 1776. He was retired from the Army on January 1, 1783. He was an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati.

Richard Butler The American Natchez District, as pictured in a "Sketch of the Inhabited Parts of the Territory Adjoining to the Great River", dated November 9, 1802, included an alligator, and the residences of D. Clark and R. Butler (NAID 191671882) The papers of his son Richard Butler (1777–1820) are held at Louisiana State University. Richard Butler also became a soldier. In 1798 Butler traveled the Ohio and Mississippi to deliver dispatches to Isaac Guion. He married Margaret Farar in 1799. Margaret Farar was the daughter of Benjamin Farar Sr. and Elizabeth Gaillard. He settled in the lower Mississippi River valley after he retired from the service. According to a former U.S. Army officer named James Sterrett, writing in 1811, around 1800 or 1801 General James Wilkinson had embezzled public money to buy slaves from a Mr. Jones in Maryland; the slaves were bought on credit by John Ellis, Richard Butler, and others, while "the notes" were held by Abijah Hunt. Butler's uncle Thomas Butler died at Richard Butler's "farm near New-Orleans" in 1805. In 1805, the couple "purchased Ormond Plantation, in German Coast County (St. Charles Parish), from the widow of Pierre Trepagnier. At Ormond, named for the Irish family seat of one of his ancestors, he planted sugar." The couple had lived at Woodstock near Pinckneyville, Mississippi. Their plantation was bordered on the east by that of William Yerby. The Butlers also owned a house built in 1817 by architect Henry S. Latrobe on Royal Street in New Orleans.

Col. Butler, as he was called, died with his wife at Bay St. Louis during a yellow fever outbreak. He died first. His sister and her husband inherited the New Orleans house.

Family

Butler was the second of five brothers who served as officers in the American Revolution. The two oldest brothers were born in Ireland. The brothers were, from oldest to youngest:

Richard (1743–1791), killed in the Northwest Indian War William, the subject of this article Thomas (1748–1805), 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, severely wounded in the Northwest Indian War Percival (1760–1821), 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, an adjutant general of Kentucky in the War of 1812 Edward (1762–1803), 9th Pennsylvania Regiment and the Northwest Indian War, adjutant general of the US Army