Dr. Elizur and Esther Butler State Historical Marker

Located 7.5 miles West of Rome City Limits on Ga. 20

(Text)

DR. ELIZUR AND ESTHER BUTLER

MISSIONARIES TO THE CHEROKEE INDIANS

Buried in the grave sixty feet south of this point is Esther

Post Butler. Born in Connecticut on September 15, 1795,

Post married Dr. Elizur Butler, physician and minister, in October

1820. The Butlers were sent by the American Board of Commissioners

for Foreign Missions to Brainerd and then to Creek Path, before

arriving at the Haweis Mission, near Rome, in 1826. Mrs. Butler

died in 1829 after eight years of service to the Cherokees.

Two years later Dr. Butler was arrested for residing in the

Cherokee Nation without taking an oath of allegiance to the State

of Georgia and obtaining a license from the Governor. Sentenced,

with Samuel Worcester, to four years of hard labor in the State

penitentiary at Milledgeville, he was pardoned by Governor Wilson

Lumpkin in 1833, almost a year after the United States Supreme Court

nullified the law under which the missionaries were arrested.

Upon his release, Dr. Butler returned to the Mission at Haweis,

but was forced to move the following year. In addition to attending

the Cherokees during the Removal, Dr. Butler served the missions at

Red Clay, Park Hill, and Fairfield and the Cherokee Female Seminary

prior to his death in Arkansas in 1857.

057-14 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1957

Photo: Ed Jackson

© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, The University of Georgia

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