James Butler (1774-1834)

JAMES BUTLER’S ANCESTRY

When the original Mormon Pioneer Genealogy Library was acquired by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1985, Michel L Call and Gary Boyd Roberts wrote:

The 100 largest American families all originated in New England. Immigrants to the mid-Atlantic or southern states came a generation or more later and left much smaller posterities. Furthermore, southern records are relatively scarce, and fully known southern ancestry is rare (italics added). Of the 100 largest Mormon pioneer families, the 61 from New England have an average of 173 known post-1500 ancestors; the 34 from the mid-Atlantic and southern states, only 32.

Of the 100 largest Mormon pioneer families, one that has southern ancestry is the James Butler (1774-1834) and Charity Lowe (1782-1851) family. Because of the scarcity of southern records, James Butler has only four proven ancestors. Posted here is a tentative ancestry for his mother Phebe Childers (Childres, Childress), who we accept as probably the daughter of Henry Childers and Mary Farmer. Henry’s will (dated 1 Dec 1760 and proved 3 Mar 1761) mentions a daughter Phebia, but there is no proof that this is the Phebe who later married William Butler. As pointed out by Beryl Putnam Duffin in her excellent work The Butler Saga, most of the names of the eleven children named in Henry’s will “are rarely found among descendants of our Phebe Childres Butler, suggesting that our Phebe and Phebia might not be one and the same….However, the coincidence of name, birth time, and locality is compelling.”

Extending the Childers ancestry requires us to deal with layer upon layer of uncertainty. DNA studies support the claim that the above Henry Childers descends from the colonist Abraham Childers, but Henry’s probable parentage shown here (Henry Childers and Lucretia Jones) is not proven and has been challenged.

We are including a proposal by R. Coleman Price that makes Jane (Milner?), wife of the colonist Henry Pew, a granddaughter of the early Jamestown colonist John Rolfe and his third wife Jane Pierce. This proposal makes John Bolling, a great-grandson of John Rolfe and his second wife Pocahantas (the famous Indian princess), a cousin of the Pews and would explain why Bolling was a witness to the will of Henry Pew (dated 5 May 1709 and proved 3 Mar 1711). Elizabeth Rolfe, daughter of John Rolfe and Jane Pierce, was age four and living in the Jamestown area in early 1625, but the scarcity of further records makes it impossible to determine if Elizabeth grew to maturity and married John Milner, as proposed. Also included is the widely-accepted but unproven claim that John Rolfe was chr. 6 May 1585 at Heacham, Norfolk, son of John Rolfe (1562) and Dorothy (Dorothea) Mason. This identification is challenged by Emily Jones Salmon in Encyclopedia Virginia.

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