Home Sweet Home........

Imagine building your home from the ground up without any of the modern tools used today. Slow and laborious work of felling trees and skinning logs. Trying to get a roof over their heads before the winter weather had to have been a top priority. Patrick Butler b 1760 and his wife Elizabeth Rebecca Fannin Butler lived in Elbert Co Ga the rest of their lives. They could have moved as they got Land Lottery draws, but they stayed. Perhaps Virginia to Georgia was far enough and they needed stability.



Nathan and his wife Mary Ann sold out in 1805 and left Elbert Co. We find them in Walton 1830. A younger Patrick Butler b 1799 d after 1881 m Jane Hansard in Elbert Co Ga. is also in Walton. This Patrick I know for sure is a grandfather of ours because in the census records his oldest son was Papa Butlers grandfather, William H. Butler.



Patrick Butler b1799 m Jane Hansard d After 1880 Jackson Co Ga In the 1850 Census he is living in Dekalb Co and in the 1860 , he is in Fulton county. He lists his occupation as - Carpenter
Aunt Jewell told me that someone in our family helped build the railroad and this Patrick sounds like he could be the one. The railroad was built during this era before the civil war and since he moved to Atlanta he could have used his carpentry skills for that construction.

In the 1880 census he is 81 and living with his daughter and son-in-law(John Marler) in Jackson county. That means that Papa Butler's father N. P. Butler would have known him(Patrick).

Children Of Patrick and Jane Butler- 1850 Census Walton
William H. Butler 24-Our gggrandfather
E. S. Butler 20
Nathan D. Butler 18
Cynthia C. Butler 15
James P. Butler 14
Milbury Butler 11
Henry H. Butler 10


This generation of Butlers would witness the greatest American tragedy of all time.. The War Between The States. Many of them would pay for this terrible nosedive our country took with their lives. Papa Butler's father would become an orphan at age 9 and have to grow up without a father. All of this generation of Butlers in Georgia would suffer and.. yet they would survive...We are here today because of their courage and determination to endure. The defeat of the South catapulted Georgia into horrors so unspeakable that I am convinced that whether we know it or not our grandparents and parents and even we still bear the scars of it in our unconscious. They knew as no other region of America the despair of the defeated. They knew the pain and loss of wealth, power, dignity, and even identity. All were striped away in the 4 years between 1861 and 1865.

From Virginia and the dreams of a better life in Georgia, our grandfathers and grandmothers dug in and reached down and put the dreams aside to mourn ..A mourning so deep and so wide it would swallow some of them up forever..............