Butler family bills and receipts
Scope and Contents
A large collection of bills and receipts for goods purchased by Thomas Butler of Philadelphia, his father Pierce Butler, his sister Frances, his nephew Pierce Mease Butler, and by a few other members of the Butler family. Most of the goods were purchased in Philadelphia, but as Thomas also spent time in Paris, there are bills from there as well. A wide variety of goods were purchased, including clothes and dress accessories, textiles, food and beverages, harness and saddlery, toys, plants, kitchen utensils, books, medicine, ceramics, carpeting, silverware, and many other items. As well, there are bills for house maintenance and repair, a number of bills incurred in the building of Thomas’ new house in Philadelphia (which he did not live to see completed), dental bills, school tuition, payments on accounts, expenses incurred while traveling, tax bills, and shipping charges.
Although most of the bills relate to the Butlers’ personal lives in Philadelphia or France, a few documents refer to items purchased for their plantations. Of particular interest are bills relating to the building and installation of a steam engine made by M. W. Baldwin on one of the Butler plantations.
Some of the bills were sent to people other than members of the Butler family, in particular Robert Benson and David Breitnall. Benson seems to have worked for the Butlers (he was in Paris at the same time as they, and both names appear on some bills). Breitnall may have been a property manager for the Butlers’ rental properties in Philadelphia. There are a couple of items addressed to Roswell King, Jr., manager of the Butler plantations in Georgia.
A few letters are also in the collection, dealing with family news or business. As well, the collection includes bibliographic citations, some plat maps for a piece of property in an unknown town, accounts for the de Mallevault family, trade cards for businesses in France, and a drawing for a tomb for Major Pierce Butler’s sister Frances.
Dates
- Creation: 1796-1838
Biographical / Historical
The Butlers were a large family whose wealth came from plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. Originally based in South Carolina, the family moved to Philadelphia after 1790. The progenitor of the family represented in this collection was Major Pierce Butler (1744-1822), the third son of Sir Richard Butler, an Irish baronet, and Lady Henrietta Percy Butler. He married Mary Middleton (d. 1790), from a well-to-do South Carolina family. Pierce and Mary had eight children, including Sarah, Anne Elizabeth (Eliza), Frances, Harriot Percy, and Thomas (the other children died young). Because Major Butler was estranged from his son Thomas, he nominated Sarah’s sons to be his heirs. Sarah Butler had married James Mease. Two of their sons, John and Pierce, took the surname Butler in order to inherit their grandfather’s estate. Pierce Mease Butler was married to and divorced from the famous English actress Frances Anne Kemble.
Major Pierce’s son Thomas (1778-1838) married a Frenchwoman, Eliza de Mallevault, and the couple spent time in Paris. Thomas, in addition to being estranged from his father, did not get along well with his own three sons. Thomas remained close to his sister Frances and helped her administer their father’s estate. He died while he was having a house built for him on Walnut Street in Philadelphia (the house was later sold to the Philadelphia Club). Thomas’ daughter Anne was a small child when she died in Paris in 1823. The oldest son Francis died around the age of 20; the other sons, Louis and John, preferred to live in Paris. From among their extended family, they were closest to their cousin Sarah Butler Wister (the daughter of Pierce Mease and Frances Anne Kemble Butler). Thomas’ wealth, and that of his sons, mainly came from his wife’s family and from his sister Frances.
Anne Elizabeth (called Eliza, 1774-1854) and Frances (1774-1836), twin daughters of Major Butler, never married and lived in Philadelphia. At the end of his life, the major remained close to his daughter Frances and chose her to administer the family’s plantations, which she did faithfully and well until her own death. More information about the family may be found in the book Major Butler’s Legacy, by Malcolm Bell, Jr.
Full Extent
ca. 2500 item(s)
Language of Materials
English
French
Metadata Rights Declarations
- License: This record is made available under an Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license.
Arrangement
The bills are divided first by the person to whom they relate - Thomas, Frances, Major Pierce, Mease family, Pierce Mease Butler, etc.- then grouped by year. However, within each folder, the items are arranged in accession number order rather than in date order. Items addressed simply to Mr. Butler were filed with the papers of Thomas. Bills addressed to Miss Butler are filed under Frances, although she lived with her sister Eliza and these bills could pertain to either of them. A few bills were sent to Thomas’ sons and wife, and these were also filed under his name. A collection of French trade cards is found in the first box.
Genre / Form
Topical
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Winterthur Library Repository