Benjamin Franklin Butler
(1860-1926)
Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Butler was born on the 26th of November 1860 on the Pendleton Farm in Trimble County, Kentucky. He died March 17, 1926 in Trimble County and was buried at Moffett Cemetery on that high ridge in Trimble County that overlooks the Ohio River.
Mark Collis Butler, Junior relates in The Butler & Farley Families of Trimble County, Kentucky that "Joseph Forest and Nancy Jane Pendleton Butler were last mentioned as newly married and living with her parents on the Pendleton Farm. Their first child Benjamin Franklin was born there on 26 February 1860.”
In 1859 Joseph Forest Butler married Nancy Jane Pendleton (the Butler and Pendleton families being not unwealthy farmers in Trimble County Kentucky). The young newlyweds move in with Nancy Jane's parents Robert H. and Sarah "Sally" Peak Pendleton and in February of 1860 their son, Benjamin Franklin Butler, is born on the Pendleton Farm on the banks of the Little Kentuck River.
Throughout the years, seven more children (Sallie, Mary, Charley, Joseph, Ely, John and Mark C.) are born to Joseph F. and Nancy Jane; however a young Ben probably spends his time picking tobacco worms off the leaves, fishing in the humidity that gives the haze that shade of blue that is best described as the color of tobacco smoke, and engaging in whatever other mischief only boys can find.
Conversation around the dinner table must have been interesting during Ben's early formative years, because Grandpa Robert H. Pendleton and Uncle John R. Pendleton were staunch supporters of the Confederacy.
Ben’s father was a Union man through and through and Joseph F. Butler served with the 54th Kentucky Mounted Infantry (a Kentucky Union regiment) while Uncle John R. gave his life for the South in his first encounter with the Yankees at the Battle of Mount Sterling.
The War ends and, blood being thicker than water, Robert H., wife Sally, and assorted other Pendletons and Butlers head to Missouri in 1866. The grass isn't always greener and 1870 sees them back in Trimble County on Robert H's farm in Cooper's Bottom below Milton. Five years later Joseph F. Butler and his wife Nancy Jane strike out on their own by purchasing a farm in the Liberty neighborhood of Trimble County where a fifteen year-old Ben is probably setting the tobacco plants or pruning fruit trees on his father’s fine farm of 147 acres.
One can only speculate on how Ben filled the ensuing years, but there is a burgeoning household in 1880 in Trimble County where eighteen year-old Ben is the oldest son working on the farm for his father. Sallie, fifteen, and Mary, twelve, are both attending school. Charles is nine. Joseph is six. There is a little brother named Carp who is three. And, baby brother John is the youngest at age two.
[Ben's grandchildren, Bula Fay Butler and Ben Curry, remember that his first wife was named Lillie and that Ben and Lillie had two little girls, Allie and Mary.]
When Ben was twenty-seven he courted then married nineteen year-old Lillian Clara Trout on the 18th of October 1888. Ben and Lillie lived on a farm near Milton in Trimble County, Kentucky. Lillie and Ben's children were Allie, who was born the 16th of August 1890; Mary who was born the 2nd of March 1893; and Laura Brook. Baby Laura was born on the 19th of July 1894 and lived only a few weeks. She died on the 9th of August. Her mother, Lillie Clara, died on October 15th, only a few months after having given birth to Laura Brook.
The cicadas sing loudest on those hot August days and nights and the leaves are dusty and heavy, waiting to be stirred by any small breezes. Mary and Allie were practically still babies themselves when they lost their little sister in the ebbing of summer. And the leaves were just going gold when their mama died. But Moffett Cemetery is a comforting and beautiful place to spend eternity and to play tag among the headstones of family when you’re just little girls and forget for some moments why you’re there.
[Benjamin Franklin Curry, grandson of Benjamin Franklin Butler and son of Allie, provided a copy of Mary Brook and Ben’s marriage certificate.]
"This is to certify that Benjamin F. Butler and Mary Brook Troute were united by me in Holy Matrimony at her home on the Sixth day of November in the year of our Lord 1895 in Presence of G. L. Cooper and Ida M. Cooper. Signed James E. Payne"
In November of 1895 Allie and Mary’s aunt, Mary Brook Trout, became their new mama. Ben was thirty-four and Mary Brook was twenty-one when their marriage was witnessed by Mary Brook‘s uncle Gibson L. Cooper and his wife Ida M. A bit more than a year later, William Franklin Butler was born on the 15th of October 1896. Mary and Allie had a little brother to torment and dress up. Sadly though, within his first four years in Trimble County, William lost a baby brother or sister.
In that same time span, Mary Brook also lost her uncle Gibson and her grandfather Cooper. I like to think it was a little brother who William never got a chance to know, because then the baby got to journey with some other menfolk to Moffett.
1900 U. S. Census, West Milton Township, District #1, Trimble County, Kentucky; by W. Willis
Benjamin Butler, b. November 1860, age 39, married 5 years, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky; farmer by occupation
Mary, wife, b. April 1874, age 26, married 5 years; 2 children born, 1 living; b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
Allie, daughter, b. August 1890, age 9, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
William, son, b. October 1896, age 3, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
According to the same 1900 U. S. Census of West Milton Township, widowed, twenty-nine year-old Ida M. Cooper, is living with her widowed mother-in-law, Matilda Ann Cooper. Matilda is Matilda Ann Luckett Cooper, widow of Lindsey Anderson Cooper. Matilda and Lindsey are the parents of Ruhama Cooper and the grandparents of the four Trout sisters. Ida M. is the widow of Gibson L. Cooper - Ruhama‘s brother and Mary Brook‘s uncle. Gibson L. and Ida M. Cooper were witnesses at Ben’s and Mary Brook Trout’s wedding.
So, in 1900 thirty-nine year-old Ben is farming in West Milton Township with his wife of five years, twenty-six year-old Mary Brook. Nine year-old Allie has been joined by three year-old William. Allie’s little sister and William’s big sister, seven year-old Mary, is living with her grandparents, William Francis and Ruhama Cooper Trout and the children‘s seventeen year-old aunt, Daisy June Trout.
Only a year after that census was taken, Mary Brook died on 27 November 1901. She and Ben had been married just six years. Moffett Cemetery can be stark in November with the Ohio rolling grey below and just the oak trees with their brown leaves that don’t fall until the green that is gold of spring pushes them off to make way for another beginning. William had just turned five.
Allie, thirteen; Mary, eleven; and William, seven, found a new mother when Ben married Brook Baker in 1903. And William finally got a little brother for his birthday that year when George was born on October 22nd. Five years later, Bula B. was born on May 14, 1908.
1910 U. S. Census, West Milton Twp., Trimble County, Kentucky, p. 27; by Burr R. Callis
Benjamin F. Butler, age 49, married twice; married 7 years, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky; farmer by occupation
Brook, wife, age 47, married once; married 7 years; 2 children born, 2 living; b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
Allie, daughter, age 19, b. Kentucky [16 Aug 1890]
William F., son, age 13, b. Kentucky [15 Oct 1896]
George W., son, age 6, b. Kentucky [22 Oct 1903]
Beulah B., daughter, age 2, b. Kentucky [14 May 1908]
[Mary Butler is not listed on this census with her father and new stepmother. She is seventeen years old and in five years she will marry Amer Asher and they will go west to Missouri, Oklahoma, and California.]
1920 U. S. Census, West Milton Township, Trimble County, Kentucky, William F. Butler, enumerator, 2 January 1920
Benjamin F. Butler, age 59, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky; farmer by occupation
Brooke H., wife, age 57, b. Kentucky; father b. Kentucky; mother b. Virginia
William F., son, age 23, single, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky; farmer by occupation
George W., son, age 16, single, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
Bulah B., daughter, age 12, b. Kentucky; parents b. Kentucky
Trimble County Historical Society, Obituaries from Trimble County, Kentucky
Benjamin Franklin Butler, 65, died 17 March 1926. Burial Moffett Cemetery. A lifelong resident of Trimble County, Kentucky, Mr. Butler is survived by his widow the former Miss Brook Baker, and the following children: Mrs. Mary Asher, William Butler, Mrs. Allie Curry, George W. and Miss Beulah; his brothers, Joseph F., Mark Collis, and John Butler; his sisters, Miss Mary Butler, Mrs. Sallie Luckett and Mrs. George Trout [Ely Butler Trout].
Six years after William enumerated the census for West Milton Township, Ben Butler died - on St. Patrick’s Day of 1926 - March 17th.
William's daughter, Bula Fay, remembers attending the wake at the house in Trimble County and “can still see the coffin with that old man who was my grandfather.”
March of 1926, on the ridge at Moffett Cemetery above the Ohio, heralds the beginnings of wild spring winds and a new generation of Butlers playing tag among the headstones.
Perhaps a twelve year-old Ben Curry and his brother Donald were there, annoyed by toddling cousins, Bula Fay and Buford, as the adults in their cloche hats and fedoras exchange their “remember whens.”
And the Little Muddy - the Ohio - roils with its spring run-off down to Cairo . And the last remnants of the brown leaves from the oaks drift down to be scattered by the grandchildren’s racing feet.
The land endures and family endures and home is where the heart is, with families - transcending time and space - wherever their boot soles might take them.
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman
