Jerry Butler's Service on the USS Wright (CVL-49) Aircraft Carrier

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Jerry Butler paid his way through college by enrolling in the Navy ROTC. Consequently, when he graduated in June 1952, he was commissioned as an ensign and required to fulfill his military service. He joined the crew of the USS Wright in July 1952 and served on it until August 1954 as an "Assistant CI Division Officer" in the Combat Information Center (CIC) on the ship.

One day while the ship was in port at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he invited my cousin, Tim Pfeiffer, to come aboard ship. Many years later, Tim reminisced about the experience:

It must have been 5th or 6th grade because my friend Jack Ramsdell was with me, which would make it early fifties. Wright, with Lt Butler aboard (or, within the family, since my mother, and her mother, always promoted family members, in command) was in NY, probably Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Jerry gave us a tour. I don’t remember how we got from Connecticut to Brooklyn, but I do remember parts of the tour.

We started up on the flight deck and the sailor who stood on the flight deck wiggling flags to guide the planes in for a landing told us all about it, showed us the three arresting cables stretched across the deck and the hook on the tail of the plane that grabs the cable to bring the plane to a halt. We walked up to the other end of the flight deck, quite some distance, as I recall. We stopped near the end of the deck and he said this where I stand, right in the middle of the runway, to guide the pilot in, and if he does it right the hook will catch the first or second cable and bring the plane safely to a stop, way back there. So, here he comes. Oops, missed #1, not a problem, now #2, damn he missed again, now for #3, last chance. Oh shit, he missed that one too, here he comes, full speed, down the runway, heading right for me. And then the sailor took off at a dead run across the runway and when he got to the edge of the deck he jumped right overboard.

I looked at Jack and he was as shocked as I was then we looked at Jerry and he was doing his best hold the laughter in as he told us to go look. We ran over and the sailor was not down in the water since there was a big net and sort of chute arrangement, and he was standing down on the next deck, laughing just as hard as your father. He called up “Alright Lieutenant, send them down one at a time”. And down the chute we went, one after another. Can you imagine an officer in today’s Navy throwing sixth graders down the escape chute, just for fun? Life was better in those days.

Next Jerry took us to see where he worked which was a big dimly lit room full of radar screens, radios, chart tables and other cool stuff. Jerry told us this Is the CIC, and the guys up on the bridge think that means “Combat Information Center”, but down here we know that it means “Christ I’m Confused”. We ended up on the bridge and Jerry showed us the wheel, the compass, and the two large, maybe 8” in diameter, iron spheres mounted next to the compass which are adjusted to counteract the effect of the ship’s steel hull on the magnetic compass. Jerry put one hand on each and stood there until he had our attention then said “And these are known as the Navigator’s Balls”. Although I don’t remember clearly somehow I doubt that we were able to maintain our sixth grade dignity at that point.

It was a wonderful day and Jack and I felt unbelievably manly, being included in the swearing and jokes about balls and such. I am sure I couldn’t write this much about any other sixth grade day.

Jerry and Penny Butler's Early Years in Phoenix, Arizona

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In the summer of 1959, Jerry and Penny Butler made a bold move. Jerry was 29 and Penny was 28 (turning 29 in November) when he graduated from Yale Law School and accepted a position at the firm of Lewis, Roca, Scoville, Beauchamp & Linton. In Phoenix. Jerry was from North Dakota. Penny was from New Jersey. They had never lived out west and both of their parents felt like they were moving to a distant, exotic land.

In 1959, most of America viewed Arizona as remote and exotic, for that matter. So, it is not surprising that National Geographic chose to do a 45-page feature titled, "Arizona: Booming Youngster of the West" in March 1963 (view PDF).The issue in which it appears couples Arizona with articles on other remote lands: Venezuela and "Sikkim, Tiny Himalayan Kingdom in the Clouds." The author, Robert de Roos and his photographer, Robert F. Sisson, traveled this strange land from top to bottom and filed this report: "After a 3,500-mile look at it, I can report that Arizona is an unparalleled experience—a state at once complex, casual, and simple, endowed with a handsome display of wonders."

I was five and my brother, Reid, was almost three when we moved to Phoenix. We never really knew any other home beside our ranch-style house on North 13th Street. And so to us, the desert was the norm, was the taken-for-granted. As rebellious teenagers, we were eager to escape this "unparalleled experience." He, I, and my two sisters who were born in Arizona, all left the state to attend college. But the allure of the desert is strong and my three siblings have been drawn back to Phoenix to build careers and families, while I remained an Arizona expat in Alabama.

In February 2022, I discovered this NatGeo piece and obtained a copy of it from eBay. Like Proust's madeleine, its images sent me reeling back into the past. In so many ways, it captures the iconography from my youth. (Click any thumbnail image below to enlarge it.)

• "Boosted by 5,000-pound rocket thrust, dummy pilot and seat soar 400 feet as engineers of Rocket Power, Inc. test their new Zero-Zero catapult escape system near Mesa." Click to enlarge.
• "Telephone in the swimming pool symbolizes the luxury of estates in Paradise Valley..." Click to enlarge.

Rocket Power's catapult escape system is what first alerted me to this issue of National Geographic. I saw it posted on social media—incorrectly identifying the occupant as a brave test pilot—and was drawn to it because my father worked at an airplane ejection-seat factory during the summer of 1959, before his job at the law firm began. At least, this is how what I remember being told about his temporary job. It was very hot work. When he would arrive home at the apartment they had rented, he would not say a word to my mother or me until he had slipped on his bathing suit, hopped in the complex's pool, and then had a cold beer. No, there was no phone in the pool. That luxury was reserved for the citizens of tony suburbs like Paradise Valley.

• "Citrus grove on the outskirts of expanding Phoenix produces its most profitable yield a crop of houses." Click to enlarge.
• "Water sports in the front yard." Click to enlarge.

Our much more modest $11,000 home in north-central Phoenix was one of many suburban tract homes built in former citrus groves. In our case, we had six grapefruit trees in our yard, which is why I detest grapefruit to this day. Grapefruits, however, do make handy projectiles for the ongoing neighborhood battles that were waged on a nearly daily basis. The baby boom of the post-war generation meant that our neighborhood had dozens of similarly aged children running through our street, which ended in a cul-de-sac, throwing grapefruits at one another. One developed a feel for one’s ammunition. Unripe grapefruits did the most damage as they were hard as rocks. Mature grapefruits could be thrown on the ground to split open before throwing—thus ensuring the widest spread of grapefruit shrapnel. And the rotten grapefruits on the ground? They had to be carefully scooped up, to avoid your fingers going right through them. Then they could be gingerly hurled catapult-style at one's target.

To my young self, the other major perquisite of life in a citrus grove was that our yard was flooded every other week during the summer (less often in the winter). The irrigation system was left over from the citrus-grove days, but we kids hardly recognized that. Irrigation was just another taken-for-granted aspect of Phoenix life. We gaily splashed around and participated in, as NatGeo says, “water sports in the front yard.” Of course, this was not potable water. Who knows what sort of parasites we ingested or diseases we came in contact with? I presume optimistically that it was part of growing up in an unhygienic environment that may have made me more disease-resistant in later years—perhaps counterbalancing the skin cancer that a youth spent in the sun seems to guarantee.

• Tucson, with its "stately" saguaro cacti, as they are inevitably called.Click to enlarge.
• Staged gunfight at Old Tucson, a functioning Western movie set—until it burned to the ground. Click to enlarge.
• Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone. Click to enlarge.

Jerry and Penny were eager to explore their adopted state and we took many, many road trips. Sometimes we went south to legendary locations of the Old West such as Tucson and Tombstone.

• Slide Rock, in Oak Creak Canyon, near Sedona. Click to enlarge.
• The author at Slide Rock, with his cousin, Tim Pfeiffer, and sister, Lydia Butler (1965). Click to enlarge.

And, naturally, we also went north to the Grand Canyon—a natural wonder that leaves me gob-smacked no matter how many times I see it. Occasionally, we would take the slower, two-lane route to the Canyon, winding through Sedona, which even in the 1960s was developing a reputation as an artists colony. From Sedona, we’d continue north through Oak Creek Canyon, where one of my favorite Arizona attractions was located: Slide Rock. Slide Rock was and is a water slide that was naturally cut into the red rock of the area. One could slip into it at the top and be carried along for 60 or 70 feet by the current, which would deposit you in a pool at the bottom. Today Slide Rock is an official state park, but in the 1960s it was unmarked and undeveloped—not a picnic table or an outhouse to be found. You just had to know where to park and what trail to take to get to it. A hidden gem, at the time.

For me, Oak Creek also had a tragic side. In 1965, I saw my first dead body there. A young schoolboy was on a field trip and he got caught in a deeper part of the Creek. He drowned and sank to the bottom. My family and I came upon the scene as volunteers were creating a human chain into the Creek to retrieve the corpse. I was only 11 at the time, but I still remember it vividly.

Butleriana, Genealogica et Biographica

I was poking around on the Internet, as one does, when I stumbled across a tome titled, Butleriana, Genealogica et Biographica; or Genealogical Notes Concerning Mary Butler and her Descendants, as Well as the Bates, Harris, Sigourney and Other Families, with Which They Have Intermarried, by James Davie Butler, published in 1888 by J. Munsell's Sons (available through the Internet Archive).

Unfortunately, James D. Butler's family line does not appear to intersect mine, but, holy cats, what a great title! In Latin!

I hope he doesn't mind that I've clipped part of his title page and inserted it here. And I've also just registered butleriana.com!

E.C. Butler Obituary (October 1929)

The Sentinel Courier newspaper, in Cooperstown, Griggs County, North Dakota, printed a lengthy obituary for my great-great-grandfather, E. C. Butler. The helpful folks at the Griggs County Historical Society provided a transcription of it when I visited in 2017:

Griggs County Sentinel Courier, 1929
Obtained from Griggs County Historical Museum, 2017.

Edward Clarence Butler was born in Gorham, New Hampshire in [24 October] 1845. The town is situated amid the wonderful beauties of scenery at the foot of Mount Washington, the highest peak of the White Mountains. He was the son of Rev. Henry Butler [1807-1850], a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

At the age of 17 he enlisted at the outbreak of the Civil War in company I, 25th Maine militia, and later served in company G 23rd Maine infantry volunteers until the regiment was mustered out of service.

In 1870 he was married to Miss Mary Hayes in New Glouster [sic; Gloucester], Maine. Two children were born in their home, a daughter Alice, who has gone to the other world, and Wm. H. Butler, now of Grandin, this state [North Dakota]. They made their home in New Glouster [sic], Maine, until 1876. In that year, with their two children, they left to make their home in Austin Nevada.

While on a visit home, on October 2, 1882, Mrs. Butler died in New Glouster [sic]. The same year Mr. Butler moved from Nevada to Tower City, where he was in partnership with Benjamin A. Upton until Mr. Upton's death in 1904.

In 1905 Mr Butler was married to Mary T. Hagen. One child was born to this union, Clarence H. Butler, who is now a resident of this city [Cooperstown, ND].

In 1882 Mr Butler moved to his farm in Steele County, where he made a wonderful success of farming. He retired from farming because of ill-health in the spring of 1917, and since that time he has made his home in this city.

On January 30, 1925, the portrait of Mr. Butler was hung in the Hall of Fame at the State Agricultural College [now North Dakota State University] by the Saddle and Sirloin Club, in recognition of outstanding contribution in North Dakota agriculture in connection with his work with Shorthorn Cattle and Poland China swine.

He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and the last member of this organization in Griggs County. He united with the Knights of Pythias in Austin, Nevada, and with the Masons here in Cooperstown. He was interested in public affairs, temperance reform and all civic, state and national politics for the advancement of the welfare of the nation. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Cooperstown. His wife, Mrs. Mary Hagen Butler, died here on May 15, 1925.

E. C. Butler, Griggs County's remaining survivor of the Civil War, died at his home here in Cooperstown on Tuesday afternoon [1 Oct 1929], after suffering for several months from cancer. Several years ago Mr. Butler suffered from the same ailment, but at that time it was thought that an operation and medical care had cured him. Some weeks ago, however, he was again attacked by the dread disease, and his death came peacefully shortly after the noon hour Tuesday. Funeral services were held from the Presbyterian Church here this (Thursday) afternoon, Dr. L. C. Cooley officiating. Burial was made in the Cooperstown Cemetery, a firing squad consisting of members the American Legion firing a salute at the grave.

When death claimed him on Tuesday afternoon, at his home here, he had reached the age of 83 years, 11 months and 7 days.

He is survived by his two sons, Wm. H. Butler of Grandin, this state [North Dakota], and Clarence H Butler of this city [Cooperstown], and his brother, Henry Butler, now 90 years of age and serving as superintendent of the Masonic and Eastern Star old folks home in Greensboro, North Carolina.

A 1973 Biography of E.C. Butler (and his son, W.H.)

Apparently the Sentinel Courier newspaper, in Griggs County, North Dakota, printed occasional biographies of notable local citizens--as "letters to the editor." On March 29, 1973, it published a piece about my great-great-grandfather, E. C. Butler, and his son, W. H. Butler; which was written by Edward Johnson.

The "letter" has many facts of which I was not previously aware, such as: E.C.'s "barn with a sign on it was 112 feet long and 40 feet wide. The hay section occupied 8 feet down the center of the barn and livestock in 16 feet on each side." Who knew?

I've placed the entire letter online as a PDF.

KBUN AM Radio

Ed Butler with unidentified KBUN announcer while covering a football game and Gwen Butler hosting a "woman's" show. I recently added the following information about KBUN to Wikipedia:

KBUN-AM first went on the air on October 30, 1946, as part of a wave of radio and TV stations that launched after electronics rationing during World War II.[1] It was initially owned and operated by Harry F. Pihl and R. W. Bradford as Bemidji Broadcasting Co. (aka, Paul Bunyan Broadcasting Co.) and broadcast with 250 watts at 1450 AM, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.[2] Affiliated with the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS),[3] it was purchased on February 24, 1948 by Butler Broadcasting Co. and operated by Edward and Gwenyth Butler from then until 1956.[4] Its studios were located at 419 1/2 Beltrami Avenue, Bemidji.

My grandparents, Ed and Gwen Butler, bought KBUN in 1948 after bouncing around from job to job in North Dakota in the 1930s and '40s. They purchased it the year my father, Jeremy E. Butler, graduated from Jamestown High School and went to spend a year at Exeter Prep, followed by four years at Yale. When he would return to Bemidji during school holidays, he would be put to work at KBUN, as would his brother, Roger.

My grandparents ran KBUN from the second floor of a building, above Gill's Shoes, at 419 1/2 Beltrami Avenue. In 1978 my dad traveled to Bemidji for the 100th birthday of his grandfather, Elmer Goar, and took this photograph (below, left) of the building. In 2015, according to Google Maps, the facade has changed and the building is for rent. Ken K. Thompson Jewelry moved into the space in 1981 and they were the ones to redo the facade, covering the original brick with stucco. They moved out of the building in fall 2012 to a new building near the Paul Bunyan Mall, at 1080 Paul Bunyan Drive NW. I emailed Dale Thompson of KKTJ with a few questions and he kindly responded. I asked if there was an upstairs tenant while they were there and he replied, "Both floors were used by KKTJ but the upstairs we basically used as storage and was largely undisturbed when we owned it. Being a jewelry store and with security concerns we could not rent the upstairs as apartments or such." He also said the current (June 2017) owners removed the stucco and returned it to its previous facade.

I don't know who was there between 1956 and 1981.

Eleven years before the Butlers moved to Bemidji, Bud Woodard made a promotional film for the town.

The Butler Crest

I few years ago I began researching the Butler coat of arms. I even created my own version of it, as seen on the left. There's quite a bit of information about the meaning of the iconography of this crest, which may be found here.

John Howland, Swept Overboard the Mayflower

My 10th great-grandfather came to the "New World" on the Mayflower, but he almost didn't make it. John Howland was washed overboard and had to be hauled back on ship. From Governor William Bradford's journal (transcribed into contemporary English):

"In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce, and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull ["To heave or lay-to under very short sail and drift with the wind"], for divers days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storm, a lusty ["lively, merry; no sexual connotation"] young man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above the gratings, was, with a seele ['roll or pitch"] of the ship thrown into the sea; but it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards, which hung overboard, and ran out at length;

yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again, and his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and commonwealth." (Source: Tales in the Tree; with annotations in square brackets taken from Samuel Eliot Morison's 1952 edition)

As it originally appears in the Bradford journal: "In sundrie of these stormes the winds were so feirce, & ye seas so high, as they could not beare a knote of saile, but were forced to hull, for diverce days togither. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storme, a lustie yonge man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above ye grattings, was, with a seele of ye shipe throwne into [ye] sea; but it pleased God yt he caught hould of ye top-saile halliards, which hunge over board, & rane out at length; yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was hald up by ye same rope to ye brime of ye water, and then with a boat hooke & other means got into ye shipe againe, & his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church & comone wealthe. William Bradford, "The 9. Chap. [p. 92] Of their vioage, & how they passye sea, and of their safe arrivall at Cape Codd," Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (Electronic version prepared by Dr. Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College, March 1, 2002), HTML version, PDF version. See also the Project Gutenberg eBook.

In Bradford's Own Handwriting

Scans of Bradford's original journal are available online from the State Library of Massachusetts.

Oh, and here's Howland's autograph:

John and Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland: Prolific Breeders

Once John Howland escaped the hands of the briny deep, he found himself to be one of the few single men to survive the devastating winter of 1620-21. Soon after, he married an orphan girl: 15-year-old Elizabeth Tilley. She had come over on the Mayflower with her mother and father, but they both perished during the first winter. She was taken in by Governor John Carver and his family, but he soon died, too. Soon afterward, Howland and she wed.

It proved to a providential union, resulting in prolific breeding: ten children lived to adulthood and they subsequently produced some 88 grandchildren.

Thus, the descendants of John and Elizabeth are not a select club. In fact, both of my grandfathers are Howland dependents—as can be seen in the relationship charts for Edward W. Butler and Franklin C. Wells, Jr.

Will Hall Butler, a poem by Jeremy Edward Butler

Had my father not become a lawyer, I know he would have loved to have been a writer. For many years, he took creative writing classes at Phoenix College and he also attempted a long form series of stories about his ancestors—some more historically accurate than others. Here is one he wrote about his grandfather, Will Hall Butler (1873-1955), that also speaks to his interest in genealogy.

At left, Will and Idella Butler (1875-1960), with Edward William Butler (1900-1965) on her lap, circa 1901.

In the old black-and-white 8mm home movies,
Will Butler, my father's father, appears in a white shirt
with garters on his upper shirtsleeves and a dark tie.
He looks right at the camera and his smile splits his round and gentle face.

As a young boy Will lived on a farm in Norway, Maine
and then went west in 1876 with his family.
I need to know about his leaving the evergreens of Maine
for the sagebrush of Nevada.
He rode a stagecoach 126 years ago from Battle Mountain
to Austin, Nevada with his father E.C., mother Mary
and younger sister Alice May.
I need to know about his growing up in a western silver mining camp.
His sister died in that mining camp when she was six,
I need to know how he felt.
At nine he went back from Nevada to Maine with his mother
and she suddenly died of pneumonia.
I need to know his grief.
When his father moved from Nevada to Cooperstown, North Dakota
and lived in a shack on a prairie homestead
and raised Will without a mother,
I need to know his story.

In the last three years to know Will's story,
I have stood on the original farm in Norway, Maine
and at his mother's grave eight miles south of the farm
and traveled the 88 miles of high desert from Battle Mountain to Austin, Nevada
and walked its streets
and knelt at his sister's grave
and trod the North Dakota fields where the shack stood
and walked on the porch of the wooden house
that Will built for his family in 1900,
the year that my father was born.
It is unimportant that the decrepit house I found,
overgrown with oak and maple trees, bushes and weeds,
may not have been the ancestral home.
When I went to my father's birthplace, Sherbrooke, North Dakota,
that old house was the only structure still standing at the townsite.
The whole town has disappeared, plowed under
so the dirt farmers can grow more wheat.

It is likewise unimportant that my re-creation of Will's life
may not be entirely accurate.
It is only important that I find and tell his story
so that the three of us (he, my father and I)
won't be plowed under.

Copyright ©2000, Jeremy E. Butler.

1930s Life in North Dakota, by Jeremy Edward Butler

Jeremy E. Butler's memories about life in North Dakota:

I believe that it was in 1936 or 1937 that we moved into the house on Conklin Ave., in Grand Forks, North Dakota. This was before Bruce [Wilson Butler] was born [in 1939] so there were five of us and grandparents Elmer and Ducky in a three bedroom house with one bath. [Elmer and Ducky were Elmer E. Goar (1878-1978) and Gunda Wedmer Goar (1882-1944). Elmer is pictured in front of the house in the photograph on the left.] Roger [William Butler (1933-)] and I shared a room that had been a walk-in closet. Elmer and Ducky had a bedroom with a fold-out couch. It was amazingly uncomfortable with metal strips. One small bedroom became their kitchen.... I cannot remember where Danny [Dannis Goar Butler (1934-2000)] slept. When Bruce arrived in 1939, the grandparents moved out.

The house was two-story with a wonderful wooden banister. I can recall walking down the Bannister in a test of the gripping power of my new Keds. There was a large fireplace in the living room. Off that room was the office, entered through French doors. Books filled bookcases with class doors to enclose the books. The only phone sat on a large desk in the office. Through an arch was the dining room with a big table, seating all of us. There were entrances to the kitchen off the living room and dining room. A hole was cut in the ceiling of the dining room so a register was inserted to let heat reach the bedroom for Roger and me. It was also a place where we could eavesdrop on the voices from below. From Conklin Avenue, a sidewalk ran between two large evergreen trees to the front door and a large glassed or maybe just screened porch.

I started this piece because I was thinking about the backdoor area. On the second floor above the back door was a large screened sleeping area. I spent a summer there recovering from bronchitis. I devoted a large part of my stay by spitting phlegm on newspapers by the bed. My mother and Ducky read books to me all summer. This was before penicillin for such diseases.

I started thinking about the house because of the area just off the back door. It was a storage space for shovels, yard stuff and cans of dog food. I think it was called RedHeart. I can still smell it from months of opening the cans and feeding Copper, our cocker spaniel. He had a healthy life from the dog food and scraps from the table. Our aunt and uncle, Frances and Cutsy [Frances Butler Swanson (1903-1997) and Hjalmar Carl Swanson (1895-1974)], had another dog from the same litter. I think she was named Ginger. The two dogs hated each other. One day they had a blood-curdling fight under our dining room table.

In the back room there was an enclosed space up near the ceiling. Each Christmas an overflow of gifts to us boys would be put in that space to be reopened during the cold winter months. At least that was the plan. I am not sure how well it worked. We made difficult choices about which gifts to be stored for later use.

I can't leave Conklin without talking about the basement. An old pool table occupied a room that made a tight fit. There were special saw-offed cues to be used at one end of the room. The cushions on the table had lost their bounce long ago. My father and I spent hours at the table. There was a game we played with a small rubber bottle... The washing machine and coal furnace all sat in the basement. This meant we had a coal bin. It also meant that washed clothes were toted up the basement steps to be placed on clothes lines outside, weather permitting. Otherwise they were hung in the basement.

There was another room in the basement that was the source of teasing of our mother later. It held canned goods in Mason jars and sacks of potatoes until they rotted. But the excitement was the overhead light. The bulb was one of those funny-looking bulbs with a small point at the top. Turning the light on or off always gave one a shock. Our mother never believed Roger or me when we reminded her of that phenomenon. The shelves in this room held Bing cherries, the favorite, peaches, jams and, even canned pheasant. The pheasant did not look too good in the jar, but it tasted okay. You had to be wary of buckshot in the pheasant.

We lived in this house until 1945 when Dad left teaching to work for the government in Fargo. Roger and I have both recently driven by the house on Conklin. One of the pine trees has been removed. But that does not stop the surge of memories from that house.

Copyright ©2000, Jeremy E. Butler.

The House As It Appeared in Google Maps (2012)

Cousin Wild Bill Hickok

I may have to re-view all the Deadwood episodes with Wild Bill Hickok in them now that I have just learned that James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok is my 5th cousin 5x removed.

Our common ancestor is Nicholas Butler (1590-1671), my 10th great grandfather. Wild Bill's mother was a Butler by the name of Polly (1804-1878) who married William Alonzo Hickok (1801-1852) and gave birth to James Butler Hickok in 1837 in Homer, Illinois (now Troy Grove).

Hickok went by several different names over the years. According to Wikipedia: "While in Nebraska, Hickok was derisively referred to as 'Duck Bill.' He grew a mustache... and in 1861 began calling himself 'Wild Bill'". *Joseph G. Rosa add that "duck bill" was due to his "...sweeping nose and protruding upper lip..." (They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok [University of Oklahoma Press, 1979], p. 51).

He was assassinated by Crooked Nose Jack in Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota), on August 2, 1876, while holding the "dead-man's [poker] hand" of black aces and eights!

His friend, Colorado Charlie, buried him under a marker reading, "Wild Bill, J. B. Hickock [sic] killed by the assassin Jack McCall in Deadwood, Black Hills, August 2d, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting ground to part no more. Good bye, Colorado Charlie, C. H. Utter." Leonard Harold Boucher details what later happened to Hickok's body: "The great gunslinger was originally interred in Boothill, but later on his body was exhumed and buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery. To date, his grave has been decorated by no less than five markers, two of wood, two stone and one life-size statue, also stone."

One interesting sidebar to the story of William and Polly Hickok's family is that they "...operated a station on the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves to freedom. His sons often assisted with this work, and it was during these times that young James began to develop the courage, cunning and resourcefulness that marked his later years," according to Wild West magazine.

Among the earliest articles to construct the legend of Wild Bill was one published in the February 1867 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. A PDF of the article is over here. Or you may access the entire Harper's volume on Google Books (thanks, Google, for digitizing it!).