USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Vol. III > Part 37
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Eliza Leet, daughter of Major Daniel and Wilhelmina (Ballah) Leet, mar- ried David Shields, of Irish ancestry.
Maria Shields, daughter of Major David and Eliza (Leet) Shields, married John K. Wilson.
Eliza Shields Wilson, daughter of John K. and Maria (Shields) Wilson, mar- ried William S. Bissell.
JOHN K. BRYDEN
JOHN K. BRYDEN, deceased, was a descendant of the fourth generation froin his maternal great-grandfather, John Purviance, a soldier of the Revolution.
JOHN PURVIANCE was born in the North of Ireland in the year 1742, died in Washington, Pennsylvania. He enlisted and served as a private in Captain Wil- liam Findlay's company of the Eighth Battalion, Cumberland County Pennsyl- vania Militia. He was in the service in March, 1778. He removed to Wash- ington county, Pennsylvania, after his military service. He married Elizabeth Thompson.
JOHN W. PURVIANCE, son of John and Elizabeth (Thompson) Purviance, married Annalanah Anderson.
ELEANOR PURVIANCE, daughter of John W. and Annalanah (Anderson) Pur- viance, married James Bryden.
JOHN K. BRYDEN, son of James and Eleanor ( Purviance) Bryden, was born at Franklin, Pennsylvania, March 2, 1858.
HELEN (WHITE) BEESON
HELEN (WHITE) BEESON (Mrs. Charles E. Beeson) is a descendant in the fifth generation of William Loughrey, a Revolutionary officer in service from Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, in 1777. Captain William Loughrey was born in Ireland, May 22, 1756, died in Indiana county, Pennsylvania, September 27, 1825. His wife was Esther Allison. The line continues with his daughter.
REBEKAH LOUGHREY, daughter of Captain William and Esther (Allison) Loughrey, married Malachi Sutton, and had issue :
GARVIN SUTTON, son of Malachi and Rebekah (Loughrey) Sutton, married Jane Gilchrist. It is with their daughter that the line continues.
ANNA LENA SUTTON, daughter of Garvin and Jane (Gilchrist) Sutton, mai - ried Henry White.
HELEN WHITE, daughter of Henry and Anna Lena (Sutton) White, was born in Indiana, Indiana county, Pennsylvania. She married Charles E. Beeson.
ANNA (SAY) LIGGETT
ANNA (SAY) LIGGETT (Mrs. Thomas Liggett), of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a descendant in the sixth generation of the Revolutionary soldier, James Sheridan, who died March 17, 1803. He was with the army that invaded Canada and was at the battle of Three Rivers. While scouting near Buttermilk Falls he was wounded and compelled to leave the service. His wife Mary was a nurse with the army.
JAMES SHERIDAN married Mary Armstrong and had issue.
ANN SHERIDAN, daughter of James and Mary (Armstrong) Sheridan, mar- ried John Campbell.
JOHN (2) CAMPBELL, son of John (I) and Ann (Sheridan) Campbell, mar- ried Elizabeth Hinch.
ANN CAMPBELL, daughter of John (2) and Elizabeth (Hinch) Campbell, married James E. Steele. She died in 1887, aged sixty-eight years.
ELIZABETH STEELE, daughter of James E. and Ann (Campbell) Steele, mar- ried Asa Winfield Say, who died in 1901, aged sixty-eight years. His widow, Elizabeth Steele Say, survives him.
ANNA SAY, daughter of Asa Winfield and Elizabeth (Steele) Say, was born in Franklin, Allegheny county, Pennsylvania. She married Thomas Liggett, oldest son of John and Frances Liggett, and grandson of Thomas Liggett, who came to Pittsburgh from Ireland in 1801 and died at "Springwood", the family home in East End, Pittsburgh, in 1865. The children of Thomas and Anna (Say) Liggett are : Thomas (2), a graduate of Princeton, class of 1906; Law- rence Say; Dorothy Frances; Elizabeth. Mrs. Liggett and her daughters are members of Pittsburgh Chapter, Daughters of American Revolution.
GEORGE HOLLENBACH BUTLER
The Butler family so prominently associated with the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania since the first Connecticut settlement there, was founded in America by Lieutenant William Butler, born about 1650, who was a yeoman at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1688, and was made a freeman there October II, 1682. He died at Ipswich, August 2, 1730, being at the time of his death a con- siderable landowner there. He married (first) in 1673, Sarah Cross, born in 1654, by whom he had nine children. He married (second), July 21, 1703, Mary Ingalls, by whom he had three children, two of whom died young and unmar- ried. He married (third), November, 1713, Abigail Metcalf, born 1656, who sur- vived him and married as second husband, June 16, 1731, Lieutenant Simon Wood. Lieutenant William Butler acquired his military title through service in the early Indian wars, and is referred to in the records of Ipswich by that title.
JOHN BUTLER, only surviving son of Lieutenant William Butler, by his second wife, Mary Ingalls, was born about the year 1707, in Ipswich, Massachusetts. His marriage with Hannah Perkins was published December 27, 1729. She was a daughter of Abraham and Abigail (Dodge) Perkins, granddaughter of Isaac and Hannah (Knight) Perkins, great-granddaughter of John Perkins, quarter- master of Ipswich in 1675; and great-great-granddaughter of John Perkins Sr., who came to Massachusetts from Bristol, England.
John Butler became the owner of considerable land in Ipswich, Massachusetts, but in 1736 sold his holdings there and removed with his family to that part of Lyme, Connecticut, known as the North Society of Lyme, where he purchased land in the same year. Here he engaged in farming and trading until his death in the year 1755. He and his wife Hannah Perkins had nine children, of whom Colonel Zebulon Butler, prominently associated with the Wyoming Valley, was the eldest. Two other sons, John and Samuel, were in the Valley prior to the Revolutionary War, Samuel a school teacher in Wilkes-Barre in 1774-5, returning to Saybrooke, Connecticut, later.
COLONEL ZEBULON BUTLER, eldest son of John and Abigail (Perkins) Butler, was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1731, and was taken by his parents to Lyme, Connecticut, at the age of five years, where he continued to reside until his removal with other Connecticut settlers to Wyoming in 1769.
When the Susquehannah Company, organized in Connecticut, sent its body of settlers to take possession of the lands it had purchased on the East Branch of the Susquehanna river, Pennsylvania, Zebulon Butler went with these set- tlers and located in Wilkes-Barre, and a short time thereafter became prominent in the affairs of the Wyoming settlement of the Susquehanna Company, one of the most staunch defenders of the rights of the Connecticut settlers against the contention of the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania and later of the Supreme Ex- ecutive Council of Pennsylvania, and thenceforward until near the time of his death, says Charles Miner in his "History of Wyoming," "the life of Zebulon Butler is the history of Wyoming. Almost every letter of its annals bears the
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impress of his name and is the record of his deeds." He was not only the military commander of the men of Wyoming in their various conflicts and frays with the Pennamites and in the warfare with the Indians, but was con- stantly the holder of various civil offices to which he was either appointed by the General Assembly of Connecticut or elected by the people of Wyoming, whose adviser and leader he was in all their affairs.
His early life in Connecticut had been devoted to active trading operations, with the West Indies, carrying stock and other products of Connecticut in his own sloops from Lyme to these islands, and bringing in return such commodities as were in demand in the New England colonies. He was also the owner of con- siderable land in North Lyme, and developed a great capacity for business, which with his natural executive ability, and his military training and experience, made him the natural leader of the Connecticut settlers in Wyoming in peace and in war.
Colonel Butler's military career began with the expedition against the French at Crown Point, in 1756, at the age of twenty-four, when he was ensign of the company commanded by Captain Andrew Ward, in Col. David Wooster's Con- necticut Battalion. The company was mustered in April that year, and from about the middle of May until October or November following, was with Lieut- Col. Whiting's Battalion in camp at Fort William Henry for the campaign of Crown Point. In the campaign of 1757 Zebulon Butler served 37 weeks and 5 days as ensign of the company. Again in 1757 he was ensign of the "Rang- ers", Capt. Reuben Ferris, and served until May 15, 1758. In March, 1758, he was appointed ensign of the Eleventh Company, commanded by Capt. Tim- othy Mather, in the Third Connecticut Regiment, commanded by Col. Eleazer Fitch, and detailed to serve as quartermaster of the regiment, in which capac- ity he served at Fort Edward on Lake George. May 27, 1758, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. In March, 1760, of the Tenth Company, Fourth Regiment of Connecticut troops, and participated with the Continental forces in the expeditions against the French in Canada. In March, 1762, he was appointed captain of the Eighth Company, First Connecticut Regiment, and took part in the expedition against Havana, in which his men suffered great hardships, of sickness and shipwreck. With the surrender of French domina- tion in Canada, Captain Butler's active participation in military affairs ceased until his removal to the Wyoming Valley.
In September, 1770, Fort Durkee, occupied by the New England settlers at Wilkes-Barre, was captured by the Pennamites, and Captain Zebulon Butler was among those taken prisoners and conveyed to Philadelphia, where he was con- fined in the city jail several months. At a meeting of the Susquehannah Com- pany, held at Windham, Connecticut, January 9, 1771, Captain Zebulon But- ler, Captain Lazarus Stewart, Major John Durkee and John Smith, Esq., were appointed as a committee to "repair to our settlement at Wyoming with our set- tlers, to order and direct in all affairs relating to the well ordering and governing said settlers and settlements." Captain Butler was at that time still in Philadel- phia jail, but in July, 1771, he was at the head of an armed band of Wyoming settlers, who invested and attacked the Pennamites in their wooden fort on the River Common in Wilkes-Barre, and after a siege of twenty-six days compelled them to evacuate the fort and retire from the valley.
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Captain Butler was again named at a meeting of the Susquehannah Company, April 1, 1772, one of a committee of four to "order and regulate the settle- ment of the lands in the Susquehanna Purchase;" and again on June 2, 1773, one of the directors, with like powers. At a general meeting of the proprietors and settlers held at Wilkes-Barre, July 22, 1773, Captain Butler was "chosen to be ye Judge of the Probates" for the settlement, and when the General Assem- bly of Connecticut in January, 1774, erected the whole Wyoming region into the town of Westmoreland and annexed it to the county of Litchfield, in Con- necticut, Captain Zebulon Butler was appointed by the Assembly and commis- sioned by Governor Trumbull, a justice of the peace for the new county, and was directed to call the people of Westmoreland together and conduct an elec- tion of officers for the new town. At the election so called he was elected town treasurer, and a few weeks later was chosen one of the four representatives from the town to the General Assembly of Connecticut at its session of May, 1774. He also represented the town in the same body in October, 1774, May and Oc- tober, 1775, and October, 1776.
In August, 1775, Zebulon Butler was commissioned colonel of the Twenty- fourth Regiment of Connecticut, just established by resolution of the General Assembly, and organized in the new town of Westmoreland, and generally known as the Westmoreland Regiment. January 1, 1777, he was appointed and commissioned by the Continental Congress, lieutenant-colonel in the Army of the United States, and was detailed to duty in Wyoming Valley. In the following January he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the Third Regi- ment, Connecticut Line, commanded by Col. Wyllys, in the Continental service, and soon afterwards joined Washington's army at Morristown, New Jersey. This regiment formed part of the brigade commanded by Major General Israel Putnam. Later he was in command of Connecticut troops in defense of Dan- bury, Connecticut. At the time of the battle of Wyoming he was home for brief furlough, and was urged by the officers of his old regiment, the Twenty-fourth, to take command of the almost undisciplined force about to march to oppose the invading British and Indians under Colonel Brant. He commanded the right wing of the American line of battle on Abraham's Plains, July 3, 1778, which resulted so disastrously to the brave defenders of the Valley.
In November, 1778, he was promoted colonel of the Second Connecticut Reg- iment, to date from March 13, 1778, and from August, 1778, to February, 1781, was in command at t the "Wyoming Post." On the latter date he was ordered to the command of the new Fourth Connecticut Regiment, encamped at or near West Point, New York, and remained in command of this regiment, chiefly on the Hudson, until January, 1783, when he was placed in command of the new First Regiment, formed by the consolidation of the Connecticut troops, and with which he remained in camp at and near West Point until its dis- bandment in June, 1784, when he returned to his home in Wilkes-Barre. On March 17, 1779, he had been commissioned by Congress colonel of the Second Regiment, Connecticut Line, his commission being signed by John Jay, President of the Congress.
When the county of Luzerne was erected by act of Pennsylvania legislature in September, 1786, Colonel Butler was appointed one of the three commissioners, authorized and empowered to locate a site for the court house and jail for the
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new county, and at his house at the corner of River and Northampton streets, Wilkes-Barre, the courts of Luzerne county were duly organized, in May, 1787. On August 30, 1787, he was commissioned lieutenant for the county by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, which office he held until January, 1792.
Colonel Butler died at his residence, Coal Brook, Wilkes-Barre township, July 28, 1795. A tablet erected to his memory in Wilkes-Barre by the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society bears the following inscription :
IN MEMORY OF COLONEL ZEBULON BUTLER Born, Ipswich, Mass., 1731, Died Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1795. Commanded The American Forces at Wyoming, Pa., July 3, 1778. Ensign, 3d Regiment Conn. Troops, 1757-1758. Lieutenant, 4th Rgt., 1759. Captain, 1760-1762. Served in the Havana Campaign.
Col. 24th Conn. Regt. Wyoming, 1775.
Lieut. Col. Continental Line, 1776-1778. Colonel, Continental Line, 1778-1783. Retired June 3, 1783. Member Connecticut State Society of the Cincinnati, 1783. Member Conn. Assembly, 1774-1776. Justice 1774-1779. Judge 1778-1779. County Lieutenant, Luzerne Co., 1787-1790. Erected by Some of His Descendants July 25, 1904.
Colonel Butler married (first) at Lyme, Connecticut, December 23, 1760, Anne Lord, born April 4, 1736, at Lyme, died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1773. She was a daughter of John Lord, born at Lyme, Connecticut, about 1704, the second son of Lieutenant Richard and Elizabeth (Hyde) Lord, married, November 12, 1734, Hannah Rogers, born 1712, daughter of Lieuten- ant Joseph and Sarah Rogers, of Milford, Connecticut, and lived on Eight-Mile river, in North Lyme, where he died January 7, 1776, his wife Hannah having died there, December 25, 1762. Colonel Butler married (second) at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, August, 1775, Lydia Johnson, born 1756, died there, June 26, 1781, eldest daughter of Rev. Jacob and Mary (Giddings) Johnson. He married (third), June, 1783, Phebe Haight, born 1756, died at Wilkes-Barre, January 19, 1817. daughter of Daniel Haight, of Dutchess county, New York.
By his first wife, Anne Lord, Colonel Zebulon Butler had three children : General Lord Butler, of whom presently; Zebulon, who died in childhood; and Hannah, who married Rosewell Welles, and died in Wilkes-Barre in 1807. By nis second wife, Lydia Johnson, he had one son, Zebulon Johnson Butler, who died at Wilkes-Barre, March 23, 1817, survived by his wife, Jemima, née Fish, and nine children. By the third wife, Phebe Haight, Colonel Butler had three children: Lydia, who married George Griffin, in 1801, and died in New York City in 1804; Anne, who married, in 1804, John W. Robinson, and died in Wilkes-Barre in 1856; and Steuben Butler, born in 1789, died in Wilkes- Barre, August 12, 1881.
GENERAL LORD BUTLER, eldest child of Colonel Zebulon and Anne (Lord)
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Butler, born in the North Society of Lyme, Connecticut, December 1I, 1761, removed with his mother and other members of his father's family to Wilkes- Barre, Pennsylvania, in December, 1772, and was a resident of that town for the remainder of his long and eventful life. He was however sent back to Con- necticut to attend school, and spent two or three years there, returning to Wilkes- Barre prior to October, 1778, when he was appointed by his father, quartermaster of Wyoming Post, of which the father was then in command. He performed the duties of this appointment until January, 1779, when he became acting dep- uty quartermaster in the Continental establishment at the same post, and in June of the same year was promoted to acting quartermaster, and the following Oc- tober acting deputy quartermaster-general, with an assignment to the Wyom- ing Post, which office he held until February, 1783, when the Continental gar- rison was withdrawn from Wyoming, filling this important position under ap- pointment of the national government for nearly four years before he had ar- rived at twenty-one years of age.
Lord Butler was one of the foremost of the young men of the Wyoming set- tlement to come to the front to oppose the schemes to oust the Connecticut set- tlers, resumed by the Pennsylvania authorities in the autumn of 1783, when the "Second Pennamite-Yankee War" began. In August, 1784, he was one of the thirty-seven men under command of Captain John Swift, who marched over the Wyoming mountains to Locust Hill, near the present village of Stod- dardsville, to attack a band of invading Pennamites, in which attack one of the Pennamites was killed and several wounded. He was also one of the thirty participants in this expedition who were taken prisoners by the Pennsylvania au- thorities a few weeks later, bound and marched under guard to Easton, Penn- sylvania, where with ten others of the party he was confined in the Northamp- ton county jail until November 1, 1784, when he was released and returned to Wilkes-Barre.
Lord Butler was commissioned by the Supreme Executive Council of Penn- sylvania in April, 1787, the first sheriff of the new county of Luzerne, to serve until the election of his successor, and in the following October he was elected for the full term and served until October, 1789. He continued for many years one of the most prominent and active men in public affairs in Luzerne county, filling many offices of public trust. In May, 1788, he was elected first lieutenant of the Troop of Light Dragoons, Luzerne county militia, became captain of the Troop prior to 1798, and in April, 1799, was commissioned brigadier-general of Pennsylvania Militia. He was a member of the Supreme Executive Council (the executive department of the state prior to 1790) from October 30, 1789, to the disbandment of the Council under the new State Constitution, December 20, 1790 On August 17, 1791, he was appointed and commissioned Prothonotary, Clerk of the Orphans' Court, and Court of Quarter Sessions, Register of Wills, and Recorder of Deeds, in and for Luzerne county, which several offices he held until January, 1800, when he was removed by Governor Thomas Mckean to make room for the governor's political adherents.
He was the first postmaster of Wilkes-Barre, being appointed in 1794, and serving until 1802, when he resigned to take his seat in the State Legislature as one of the two representatives from Luzerne county. He was one of the first town council of the borough of Wilkes-Barre on its erection, and was elected
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president of that body May 1, 1806, filling that office until May, 1808. He was burgess of the borough, May, 1811, to May, 1814. He was treasurer of the county of Luzerne from 1801, and from 1815 to 1818 one of the Board of Coun- ty Commissioners. He was one of the incorporators of Wilkes-Barre Academy, a member of its board of trustees from 1807 until his death in 1824, and for seven years president of the board.
Charles Miner, in his "History of Wyoming," says of Lord Butler, "In all his various offices General Butler maintained the highest character for faithful- ness and ability. No public servant ever deserved better of the public. If he would not condescend to flatter their prejudices, he yet delighted all with his intelligence and zeal to promote their best interests. Decided in his political opinions, free in expressing them, his opponents said he was proud. If an unworthy pride was meant, the charge was unjust. He was a man of stern integ- rity, and lived and died highly respected and esteemed, while in his family and social circle he was justly and tenderly loved. He was always and everywhere the gentleman." He died at his home in Wilkes-Barre, March 3, 1824.
Lord Butler married, May 30, 1786, Mary Peirce, born October, 1763, died October 28, 1834, third child of Abel and Ruth (Sheppard) Peirce, who came from Plainfield, Connecticut, to the Wyoming Valley with the first Connecticut settlers.
Thomas Peirce, the great-great-great-grandfather of Abel Peirce, came from England to Massachusetts in 1634. From him the line of descent of Abel Peirce is through two other Thomas Peirces, to Judge and Major Timothy Peirce, of Plainfield, Connecticut, who by his second wife, Hannah Bradhurst, was the father of Major Ezekiel Peirce, one of the original members of the Susquehannah Company, and one of the original settlers in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsyl- vania under its auspices in 1763-4. Upon the organization of the town of West- moreland, before referred to, to include the whole Wyoming region claimed by the Connecticut settlers on March 1, 1774, Colonel Ezekiel Peirce was named as town clerk and recorder of deeds for the new town, which offices he held until 1777 or 1778. He was a member of the Twenty-fourth Connecticut, or Westmoreland Regiment, and survived the battle and massacre of Wyoming, July 3, 1778, dying at his home in Kingston, now Luzerne county, Pennsyl- vania, in 1779 or 1780.
Abel Peirce, father of Mary (Peirce) Butler, was the eldest child of Major Ezekiel Peirce, above mentioned, and his wife, Lois Stevens, and was born at Plainfield, Connecticut, December 15, 1736. He came with his father and other original settlers in 1762, but returned to Connecticut, and again came to the Valley with his family in May, 1769, with the Connecticut settlers led by Major John Durkee. He located in Kingston township, of which he was constable in 1772. While on a visit to his native town of Plainfield, Connecticut, he served in the "Lexington Alarm Party," April 20, 1775. Returning to the Wyoming Valley he served with the Twenty-fourth or Westmoreland Regiment in the trying scenes enacted in the Valley during the Revolution. He was justice of the peace in Kingston township, 1781-82, and otherwise prominent in local affairs until his death at his home in that township, May 23, 1814. He married, in Connecticut, about 1757, Ruth Sheppard, born 1733, died 1820, daughter of Lieutenant Isaac and Dorothy (Prentis) Sheppard, of Plainfield, whose ances-
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tors, like her husband's, were among the earliest settlers of New London, Con- necticut. Chester Peirce, their only son, was killed in a skirmish between the Pennamites and the Connecticut settlers in Plymouth township, July 20, 1784. Two daughters survived him: the second wife of Captain Daniel Holt, and Mary (Peirce) Butler.
General Lord and Mary (Peirce) Butler had ten children: Louisa, and Houghton, who died young; Peirce Butler, of whom presently; Sylvina, first wife of Garrick Mallery; John Lord Butler, who died in Wilkes-Barre, leaving two sons and two daughters; Chester Peirce Butler, born March 21, 1798, died October 5, 1850, who represented Luzerne and Columbia counties in the Thirtieth and Thirty-first Congresses; Ruth Ann Butler, who married, in 1823, John Nesbit Conyngham; Zebulon Butler, a clergyman at Port Gibson, Mississippi, for several years, died there, December 23, 1860; Lord Nelson Butler, who died at Wilkes-Barre, November 27, 1861; and Phebe Haight Butler, who married Dr. Alexander C. Donaldson, of California.
PEIRCE BUTLER, second child and eldest son of General Lord and Mary (Peirce) Butler, born in Wilkes-Barre, January 27, 1789, was a farmer in Kingston township, Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, and died there March 30, 1848. A biographer has said of him, "He was possessed of an uncommon share of native good sense and sound discriminating judgment, a happy, benevolent disposition. Few men ever had fewer enemies, and none ever had warmer and more sincere friends." He married, February 2, 1818, Temperence Colt, born December 27, 1790, died May 10, 1863, eldest child of Arnold Colt, of Lyme, Connecticut, later of Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and his wife, Lucinda Yarrington.
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