About the Butler Family site

For the benefit of future family historians . . .

Somewhere around the Fall of 1995 Susan Czaja came across several shoe boxes full of letters from grandfather Sylvester Butler in the attic of the family homestead in Cromwell CT. Since many of the family had email accounts, Sue got the idea to start typing the letters up and sending them to us. Our niece Brett Rabideau was starting up a "dot com" and gave us a group mailing list to facilitate sending out the letters. In the spring of 1996 I got the idea (though perhaps Brett also made the suggestion) that the letters had enough historical significance that we should put the letters together as a website. Brett offered to give us space for the site on toto.com. The bulk of the typing was provided by Susan Czaja and Ruby Smale, though both Jacqueline Zeppieri and I typed up several months worth.

Expansion of the site was almost inevitable. Since childhood our parents and grandparents had instilled in us a sense of our connection to history and genealogy: the homestead in Cromwell was rarely called the house; our great-grandfathers had been missionaries and school builders, doctors and railroad superintendents, sea captains and Deacons; our great-great grandmother had designed the Vermont state seal. A very early memory is of the family tree available on the G.S.Butler family page. In short, I wanted to do my part for capturing and passing on family history. Thus was born the family tree section.

Some of the information on this site comes from "The Family Laundry" newsletter, one of my first attempts at sending out family legends in the days before email became so ubiquitous. Susan gets credit for taking the newsletter idea further by suggesting that each month the 5 Butler kids should rotate writing it and send it to the rest of the family. Tolbert Butler's contribution was written on a trip from Maryland to Wisconsin the week after his son Luke was born.

The death of our mother in the summer of 1998, brought a couple other additions: a biography and Nathan Butler's addition of the Art of Jacqueline W. Butler

In early spring of 2000, Brett and I began discussing the idea of registering for a unique domain name. We bantered about the ideas of butlerclan.com, butlerbraintrust.org, and butlerancestry.net among several others. In what I felt was a rather suspicious turn of events, butlerclan.com was available in mid-April when I did a search on its availability, but two weeks later it was being reserved by an internet company that sells domain names. It was Jacqueline Zeppieri who suggested the CromwellButlers idea.

The sons and daughters of Sewall and Jackie Butler live in 3 corners of the country, but through this site and our mailing list have remained a close and connected family.

David Butler, Website host

News

The Butler family site has received the following honors, achievements or helped in the research and publishing of several books. This page is our chance to show off these accomplishments.

Fort Devens:

Our AEF section aided author William Craig in his research and writing of Fort Devens. A photo and biography of S. B. Butler are included in the book. Another 3 or 4 images from our archives are also included. The CD of photos and text that was sent to Mr. Craig was forwarded to the Fort Devens Museum

Planting your Family Tree Online:

Our Gallery page was highlighted as a good use of thumbnails in "Planting Your Family Tree Online" written by Cyndi Howell, and published by Rutledge Hill Press. Cyndi's List is a widely used index to genealogical sites and resources.

More than Petticoats:

Eva Lutz Butler was included in the book "More than Petticoats: Remarkable Connecticut Women" written by Antonia Petrash and published by The Globe Pequot Press.

Top ten personal websites:

The Butler Family Web site was reviewed in Family Tree Magazine, April, 2003 and honored as being "visually stimulating," and having "content [that] excels as much as the design."

Signal Flags and Semaphores:

Historical Signal Flags and Semaphores is a Collector's game set and has a book that contains excerpts from S B. Butlers WWI letters.

The Girl Behind the Gun:

In Augsut 1918 Eva Lutz wrote to her fiance, Sylvester Butler, about seeing "The girl behind the gun" in Atlantic City. Blandings.org.uk has included that letter on its site devoted to P.G. Wodehouse.

Cromwell CT High School Alumni:

Susan Butler Czaja started a Cromwell High School alumni page for her class of 1963 and soon it expanded to include all years from 1959 to present as well as all Cromwell Alumni from the surrounding high schools.

Spotlight on: Tomaquag Museum

My Grandmother, Eva Lutz Butler, was a founder of Tomaquag Museum in Rhode Island. Here her great grand daughter, Eva, makes a visit.

Spotlight on: S. B. Butler's Scrapbook

My Grandfather, Sylvester Benjamin Butler, was a Captain in the 301st Supply train during WWI. He kept the company's history via a scrapbook and a book dedicated to their state-side training and time in France.

Privacy Policy

Protecting the privacy of every visitor to CromwellButlers.com is important to us. When you visit our site or contact us via email we are committed to respecting your privacy.

What information do we collect or track. Your browsing of this site is completely anonymous, no attempt is made to determine the identity or tastes of individual visitors. The servers used by CromwellButlers.com do collect statistical information concerning the usage of the site. We are mostly interested in what pages are visited and how often. We also track what web servers (such as search engines) refer visitors to our sites.

Use of Cookies on our site. The Butler Family Website has occasionally used Cookies (a standard web method of storing information). The two main reasons are to ensure proper page display within pages containing frames and for the web tracking mentioned above.

Things change, so do we. We reserve the right to change this policy if necessary. Any changes will be posted here on our Privacy Policy page.