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Author Topic: Family history  (Read 2295 times)

sdmike1

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Family history
« on: March 14, 2013, 07:50:26 AM »

What cool stories do you have about your family history?

This is about my great great grandfather (so my mother's mother's father)

Spoiler
Edward Butler was the man behind the political machine in St. Louis for many years, in the late 19th century.

He was said to have been born in Ireland "in the Year of the Big Wind" which was 1839. His death certificate gave his birthdate as Jan 3, 1840, but there were other sources that differed with that. "The Book of St. Louisans" gave his birth year as 1838.

Update: His baptismal record has been located in Ireland. He was born Jan 3, 1834, and baptized 3 days later, at the Catholic Church in Rathdrum, Wicklow. His parents' address was given as "Garrymore".

There were a total of 5 siblings found in Rathdrum parish records. Baptismal dates were: Patt Butler March 19, 1820; Eliza Butler March 2, 1825; Catherine Butler Oct 11, 1830; Essy Butler April 15, 1832; and Edward Butler Jan 6, 1934.

Ed's sister Catherine was found in St. Louis, Missouri marriage records for St. Patrick's church, marriage to Daniel McCormack Nov 24, 1861. Edward was a witness.

His parents according to both the birth certificate and the death certificate were James Butler and Mary Coughlan who married on June 25, 1819, at the Catholic church in Rathdrum. The address given for James was Kilquade, and for Mary it was Garrymore. James the father may have come over to America, because there is an older man named James Butler, age 78, who died in 1866, who is buried in the same plot as Ed.

Ed's occupation on his death cert. was recorded as Master Horse Shoer and Capitalist.

Ed Butler came to America as a young boy in his early teens, and lived in New York (one news article said Harlem which would have been the country in the mid 19th c.) where he learned the blacksmith and horse shoe trade. Ed eventually made his way to St. Louis where he was possibly spotted as early as the 1860 census working as a horse shoer. There was an Ed Butler recorded as age 26 that year in the census, so if that was him, he was a bit older than he should have been if his death certificate is accurate. (Yes, he would have been 26 that year, now we know.)

A year or so later Ed married Ellen O'Neill on Oct 11, 1860 at St. John the Baptist in St. Louis, Missouri. They had a number of children over the years, including two whose graves at Calvary are listed on this site, James and Edward Jr. Another grave at Calvary is the one of their daughter Anastasia Linchey. Anastasia died at the age of 28 in 1896, a young wife to Peter Linchey, also buried in the large Butler gravesite.

"Boss Butler" as he was known, was written about extensively by Lincoln Steffens in muckraking articles of the time, because Col. Butler sent out his "Boodle Boys" (sometimes called "Butler's Indians") to influence the vote.

Ed owned several horse shoe shops in St. Louis, and became a wealthy man over the years. His son Ed Jr. was quoted in the newspaper in about 1883 saying that ladies and fire deparment horses would never wait a minute at their shops to get their horses shoed. It was usually first come first served, except for the ladies and the fire department. The shops prided themselves on shoeing a horse in four minutes, and charged $2 a horse.

Boss Butler, though the subject of much political scandal during his career, had the largest funeral ever in St. Louis, it was said in the newspapers of the time. He also had quietly helped many of the poor in St. Louis, which was not learned until after his death, when throngs lined the streets for his funeral procession. The crowd was estimated at 10,000.

He could perhaps be considered "Famous" for this website, but no one today would know who he was.

As a side note, Ed's death certificate was signed, as most were in those days, by Max Starkloff, the coroner/medical examiner for the city of St. Louis. Max Starkloff was the brother of Irma Rombauer, who wrote one of the first of the great modern cookbooks, The Joy of Cooking.

Ed Butler was in the horse business with Michael Butler (who was buried at St. Joseph's in Manchester, Mo.). They were once thought to be cousins by some in Michael's family, though perhaps they just knew each other from being in the same business, which does now seem to be the case, since their birth records have been located, and they do not come from the same Irish counties.

Ed Butler and Michael Butler jointly owned the Butler Stock Farm in Manchester, Mo., in the 1880s, boarding horses at Michael Butler's property, which Michael had bought from Ed's wife Ellen in 1884, and which remains in Michael's family to this day.

tl;dr?
he was a crime boss in St. Louis, Mo.  So go back and read it!  ;)


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hadesian

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Re: Family history
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2013, 09:17:50 AM »

Hurmph!
Great Grandfather:
Spoiler
HS 6/662
Interrogation of 2nd Lt. Baker-Byrne, alias Robert Phillippe Bosquet, 28 December 1944. Operation Vivacious. Attempted sabotage of factory producing V2 rocket components in Berlin.

“Source was supposed to be dressed as an O.T. Meister of the Todt Organisation. He discovered that the O.T. people in Germany wear very shabby outfits, usually old Wehrmacht uniforms with no badges. In BERLIN, however, the O.T. workers are dressed as smartly as any unit of the German Army. They wear the badges of their rank and salute their officers. Source soon realised that his own dirty uniform, muddy boots and lack of badges would be very noticeable when he reached BERLIN…

He also gathered that the Berliners do not consider the present air raids half so bad as those of 1943 and source feels that they should have one or two crushing raids of the 1943 type. When source said that the war did at least one good thing in that everyone now had a job, he was told that many of the factories were not working full time because of the shortage of material. The factory on the corner (i.e. source’s target), they said, was only working half time for this very reason. Some of these factory workers took sandwiches to this pub at lunchtime and ate them with a glass of beer. There were some 35 to 40 workers altogether. As the publican’s dog became too interested in his chocolate ration which he was carrying in his Wäschetasche, source thought it safer to leave.

At 8.30pm source arrived at the target for action. He believes that the general idea of the plan he was to carry out was well-conceived, but his attempt failed chiefly because he found it impossible to carry out the job alone. It necessitated forcing three doors and preparing charges, all of which required at least one man to watch and one man to do the job. He had been told to find help locally if possible but, as his appearance, papers etc. were wrong, he had not time to do this as he wanted to get away as soon as possible. Source stresses that agents going into Germany should be well aware of the fact that the dress, equipment, documents and discipline of the German Army are 100% smart and efficient and that there is no slackening in any of these respects.

Source found that the main entrance to the building was locked, so took a side entrance through one of the blocks of flats. He had been told that the factory was on the first floor and from here he heard voices and saw lights. He went for a drink to a small pub about 800 yards away and over the radio heard a pre-air-raid-alarm - something to the effect that a strong force of enemy planes was approaching such and such a point in Germany. Some of the people rushed out to shelters and source made his way back to the target and waited approximately half an hour. He had nowhere to prepare his charges, so decided to prepare them inside the factory. The entrances to the flats were brightly lit and source noticed plenty of lights in the windows and also in the streets outside. There seemed to be no strict black-out. Source had prepared two pieces of strong wire for picking the door locks and examined the first of these which did not prove to be very tough. He went back to the main entrance to have another look round and suddenly heard some women shouting, 'Burglars', whereupon two policemen appeared. Source could have killed the two policemen, but he realised that it would take at least 10 minutes to pick the three locks and prepare his charges, by which time the alarm would most certainly have been raised. He decided then that the job could not possibly be done single-handed, so took the main entrance and walked out into Prenzlauer Allee and sauntered down the street, trying not to appear in a hurry. Fortunately, there were some heaps of debris on the pavement, also there were plenty of people about, so he was easily able to avoid two shots which were fired after him. He escaped via Belforter Strasse to Lothringer Strasse where he boarded a tram to Moritz Platz. He walked about 200 yards and threw away the two pieces of wire into a drain. He took another tram and alighted at the next stop where he had a beer at the nearest pub...”

HS 6/665
Stolen from http://www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/special_operations_executive_series_1_parts_1_to_5/extracts-from-documents-part-3.aspx
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Spy in World War 2 for the British. Son of what can basically be called the Chanel of Nazi Germany, Max Becker, who dressed the wives of senior Nazi officers, I believe Goring's wife was one of them, as well as dressing leading female stars in films. Family sent to concentration camp. He escaped alone.
My other grandfathers:
Spoiler
My great great grandmother was a Contessa - IE, a female Italian count. Had she been male, and the eldest, the title of Marquis would have passed down to me - life, eh? They were hugely influential and very rich Italian noblemen, holding the highest title in all of Malta (Marquis) and there is also: The Prince of Venice, The Prince of Transylvania, a Von somewhere in Berlin, Prussia, all the way up to Louis XIII of France. There are dozens of barons and counts littered elsewhere through the history, iz nize! 
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Marquis, Princes, Louis XIII of France.
My father: pioneer in the film industry. You know, all that stuff you never hear about? Like workflow? He's the best man for that.

Yayah, there's more, I believe.
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