Source:Fleming-butler-1/content
BUTLER street in the Lawrenceville district is one of the main and best known thoroughfares in Pittsburgh. It was the main street of the former borough of Lawrenceville. The Greensburg Pike, now Penn avenue, also traversed the town, but it was more rural and only within a few decades has it become a business street in the Lawrenceville and Bloomfield sections.
Butler street took its name from the road which led to the town of Butler, crossing the Allegheny River at Sharpsburg and following Pine Creek, a well known road today and more than a century old.
Butler town and county commerorate [sic] the name of Maj. Gen. Richard Butler, the eldest and highest in rank of the five fighting Butler brothers of the Revolutionary War. Patriot, soldier and hero, Richard Butler was slain in St. Clair's disastrous battle with Indians on the frontier in 1791.
Richard Butler was long a resident of Pittsburgh, as was his brother, William. Maj. Thomas Butler, another brother, was in command at Fort Fayette, Pittsburgh, during the perilous days of the whisky insurrection.
Richard and Thomas Butler find some mention in American biographies. Hooper's Encyclopedia of American History says:
Butler, Richard, military officer; born in Ireland; came to America before 1760; was a lieutenant colonel in the Contiental [sic] Army and also in Morgan's Rifle Corps in 1777. Butler served throughout the war; was agent for Indian affairs in Ohio in 1787; was with St. Clair in his expedition against the Indians late in 1791, commanding the right wing of his army with the rank of major general. In that expedition he was killed by Indians in a battle in Ohio November 4, 1791.
Butler, Thomas, military officer; born in Pennsylvania in 1754; was in almost every important battle in the middle states during the Revolution. At Brandywine and at Monmouth he received the thanks of his commanders (Washington and Wayne) for skill and bravery. In 1791 he commanded a battalion under St. Clair and was twice wounded at the defeat of that leader, where his brother, Richard, was killed. He died in New Orleans September 7, 1805.
The other brothers receive no notice in Hooper's history. "Pennsylvania Archives," "Pennsylvania in the Revolution," the "National Encyclopedia of American Biography" contain sketches of all five. The latter states Thomas Butler was born in Ireland.
Neville B. Craig, who was born in the old blockhouse of Boquet in 1787, was a child when Gen. Richard Butler died. Craig could remember his house and knew his widow. Maj. Isaac Craig, father of Neville B. Craig, knew the Pittsburgh Butlers well, his service in the Revolution having been contemporaneous, and likely he knew all the Butler brothers, as the Pittsburgh Gazette of January 9, 1796, stated that "the number of inhabitants in the borough of Pittsburgh as taken by the assessors last week amounts to 1,395."
Neville B. Craig in his history, which was published in 1851, comments on this statement. Counting six inhabitants to a house would give the borough 232 houses. Craig said his memory went back to that year and he enumerates the houses and he had an elder friend assist him to be accurate. They could enumerate only 102 houses, counting Boquet's Old Redoubt and four houses in Fort Pitt. These are mentioned at the end of their list. Immediately above them is the line:
"Marbury street—Gen. Richard Butler."
On Market street there were 10 houses, Craig's list reading "Old jail, corner of Fourth, John Irwin, Molly Murphy," etc.
Molly Murphy's was a celebrated tavern of those days and Mrs. Mary Murphy, the proprietress, a pioneer here, was in a class all her own. She was the wife of Patrick Murphy, whom she survived. She called her tavern the "Sign of Gen. Butler." This was a compliment to the General's memory. Molly doubtless knew him well and, as her trade originally was mainly from soldiers in the garrison, she would know all their officers.
Gen. Butler was the most noted character in Pittsburgh in his day. In the brief biographies foregoing no mention is made that the General was an Indian trader here. Neither do they state that Richard Butler was second in command to Gen. Daniel Morgan at Saratoga and second in command to Gen. Anthony Wayne at Stony Point.
At the time of the whisky insurrection here in August, 1794, Gen. Butler had been dead nearly three years. However, his brother, Thomas, was in command at Fort Fayette, which stood at about Penn avenue and Ninth street. Maj. Butler furnished the small guard for Gen. Neville's house at Bower Hill and this guard made history when it fired upon the mob there and killed Maj. McFarland, one of the mob's leaders, a gallant soldier of the revolution.
It was the intention of the insurrection leaders to take Fort Fayette and get the munitions it contained. David Bradford, chief insurrectionist, could not bring the militia officers under him to do this. They knew Maj. Thomas Butler of the fort and that he was a "fighting Butler." Neville B. Craig's history tells that the fort was not attacked, because when the leaders sent word that the rebels (about 4,500 in number) intended to march peacefully from Braddocks Field past the fort into Pittsburgh, cross the Monongahela and return home, Maj. Butler answered that their peaceable intentions would be better manifested by their passing the fort at a proper distance, and they therefore took another road into town.
William G. Johnston's "Life and Reminiscences," published in 1901, says under the heading:
At the corner of Penn and Marbury (now Third) streets, there is still standing the log house in which lived Col. William Butler, and immediately adjoining, but fronting in Marbury street, is another, also of logs, which had been the residence of Gen. Richard Butler. These two were brothers and there were three others and all had been gallant officers of the Revolution.
Mr. Johnston says the date of the erection of these houses is not known. Tradition, he says, fixes them as next after Boquet's Redoubt. He also states that the log house of John Ormsby, on Water street, above Ferry, was built at an earlier date.
"At all events, these four," he continues, "rank not only as the earliest erected in Pittsburgh, but in fact the earliest west of the Alleghenies, and it is singular that, notwithstanding all the changes that have taken place around them, they yet remain."
Mr. Johnston gives a half page to a brief biography of Gen. Butler:
Gen. Butler was one of the most dishtinguished [sic] officers of the Revolutionary Army and the eldest of five brothers designated by Washington as "the five Butlers, a gallant band of patriotic brothers." Gen. Butler was in continuous service throughout the war. He distinguished himself at Saratoga and Monmouth and led one of the storming parties at the taking of Stony Point. He was present with his regiment in the operations on the James River, and at the capture of Cornwallis.
Mr. Johnston then recites the story of the St. Clair disaster and adds that a great granddaughter of Gen. Butler, Miss Eliza Irwin Butler, of Pittsburgh married in 1877 Nicholas Biddle, a great-grandson of Charles Biddle. This marriage united two historic families of Pennsylvania.
Capt. James R. Butler, who commanded the Pittsburgh Blues in the War of 1812, was a son of Gen. Richard Butler and was born in the old log house in Marbury street. When is company wa abouts [sic] to start on its long march to the Wabash country to join the Army of Gen. William Henry Harrison the captain marched the company along Marbury street, where his aged mother was still living, and, commanding a halt, walked up the steps to the door where she was standing to bid her farewell.
On his leaving her she said in a clear voice words which were heard distinctly and remembered long by the men:
"My son, remember that you are a Butler. Keep that name ever in honor. Farewell, God bless you."
In 1815 Capt. Butler is recorded by James M. Riddle in the first directory of Pittsburgh as a "gentleman, residence west side of Penn, between Hay and Pitt streets." This would be in the next block east of his paternal home. Hay and Pitt streets became Fourth and Fifth streets and are now called Fancourt and Stanwix, respectively.
The Pennsylvania Archives, republished in 1890, give the other Pennsylvania Butlers as Edward and Percival. No local mention is to be found of these officers, but their records are recorded with the services of the foregoing three in the revolution in the first volume of "Pennsylvania in the Revolution," in which work Gen. Butler receives most mention. In this book there is Gen. Henry Lee's opinion of Gen. Butler, an account of his death and some letters of Gen. Butler.
Gen. Butler was once a justice of the Common Pleas Court of Allegheny county. He was the first lieutenant of the county, an official we do not have now. The lieutenant was commander of the county's militia.
Gen. Butler also was a member of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. A record of his county lieutenancy is found in The Pittsburgh Gazette March 20, 1790, just prior to the Indian outbreak that resulted in the deaths of Gens. Harmar and St. Clair and the ultimate victory of Gen. Anthony Wayne.
The log house of Gen. Butler stood on the east side of Marbury street, one door south of Penn. There his widow continued to live. Her name, however, does not appear in Riddle's directory.
Dr. William H. Engle, historian of Pennsylvania, attests that Butler county was named for Gen. Richard Butler.
The attack resulting in Gen. Butler's death was made on St. Clair's army at daybreak November 4, 1791, in Western Ohio, about on the line of Mercer and Darke counties, the latter county commemorating the name of Col. Darke who commanded the left wing. The battle ground is now the Indian [sic] state line.
The little army of St. Clair, 1,400 men, was surrounded entirely by a host of savages under the renowned Miami chieftain, Little Turtle. American troops never were handled so severely, except at the Custer Massacre in 1876.
In brief time 37 officers and 593 privates were killed or missing and 31 officers and 252 privates were wounded, leaving fewer than 500 men unhurt. It was the battle of Braddock repeated. Lieut. Col. George Gibson, the commander, was wounded and 18 of his officers were killed. His wound was in his head but he fought with a bandage around his head, making him a mark. A second shot through one wrist disabled him.
Maj. Thomas Butler, "the gallant young soldier from Pittsburgh," was Gibson's next in command and was wounded also. Both officers did their utmost to rally the men, without avail.
Nearly all the desperately wounded were left on the field, among them Gen. Richard Butler, to become victims of the savages.
Gen. Butler's death was glorious in one sense, atrocious in another. Edward Butler, serving in the battalion of his brother Thomas as a captain, reluctantly abandoned him to his fate at the General's command.
Col. Gibson's wound was mortal. He was carried by his men to Fort Jefferson, 30 miles back on the road to Fort Washington, the former fort having been built by Gen. St. Clair on the march westward. There Col. Gibson died and was buried.
The township in Mercer county, O., in which the battle was fought, has been called Gibson in the Colonel's honor. He was a brother of Col. John Gibson, who was in temporary command of Fort Pitt in 1779, the same Col. Gibson, who was the bearer of Chief Logan's celebrated speech, and for 30 years a resident of Allegheny county until his death in 1822.
St. Clair's defeat brought mourning and trouble to Western Pennsylvanians. The name Butler is a perpetual reminder of those perilous days.
