[Frontispiece: Pardee Butler] PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF PARDEE BUTLER WITH REMINISCENCES, BY HIS DAUGHTER, MRS. ROSETTA B. HASTINGS AND ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS ELD. JOHN BOGGS AND ELD. J. B. MCCLEERY. CINCINNATI STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY 1889 PREFACE. I have not attempted to write a complete biography of my father, but merely to supplement his "Recollections" with a few of my own reminiscences. He was a man who said little in his family about his early years, or about any of the occurrences of his eventful life. Nor did he ever keep any journal, or any account of his meetings, or of the number that he baptized. He seldom reported his meetings to the newspapers. I think it was only during the few years that he was employed by missionary societies, that he ever made reports of what he accomplished. He had even destroyed the most of his old letters. And so, for nearly all information outside of my own recollections, I have been indebted to the kindness of relatives and friends. The later chapters have been written by men who knew my father intimately, and men whose reputations are such as to give weight to their testimony. To all of these friends I now offer my thanks for their kind assistance. And to the public I offer this book, not for its literary merit, but as the tribute of a daughter to a loved father, whose earnest devotion to duty was worthy of imitation. MRS. ROSETTA B. HASTINGS. _Farmington, Kansas, April 23,1889._ INTRODUCTION In this country inherited fortunes, or ancestral honors, have little effect on a man's reputation; but inherited disposition and early surroundings have much effect on his character. My father's ancestors were from New England. His father, Phineas Butler, came from Saybrook, Connecticut, where the Congregational Churches framed the Saybrook platform. His mother's people, the Pardees, came from Norfork, Connecticut. The Pardees were said to have been descendants of the French Huguenots. Ebenezer Pardee emigrated to Marcellus, now known as Skaneateles, Onondaga Co., New York. There he died in 1811, leaving his wife Ann Pardee, (known for many years as grandmother Pardee) a widow, with nine sons and two daughters. The eldest daughter, Sarah Pardee, was there married in 1813, to Phineas Butler; and there my father, who was the second of seven children, was born, March 9, 1816. In the autumn of 1818, Phineas Butler, of whom I shall hereafter speak as grandfather Butler, went to Wadsworth, Medina Co., Ohio. There a settlement had been begun three years before in the heavy timber, and there were only a few small clearings here and there in the woods.