Pardee Butler

Pardee Butler (March 9, 1816 in Onondaga County, New York – October 20, 1888 in Farmington, Atchison County, Kansas) was a farmer and preacher who arrived in Kansas in 1855 and was involved there in the run-up to the American Civil War. He is remembered in Kansas history for being set adrift on the Missouri River on a raft by pro-slavery men for his abolitionist beliefs.

Pardee Butler's ancestors were from New England. His parents are Phineas Butler and Sarah Pardee. Pardee was born in 1816. In 1818 the family moved west to Wadsworth, Medina County, Ohio in the Western Reserve. In 1839 the family moved to the Sandusky Plains in northwestern Ohio where Pardee met his future wife Sibjl [sic] Carleton. They were married August 17, 1843. Pardee farmed for a living and preached for his beliefs. He developed quinsy (an abscess of the tonsils) that caused him to give up preaching and move to Cedar County, Iowa in 1850 to improve his health. Over the next several years he preached in various places in Illinois and Missouri and in early 1855 came to Kansas.

Kansas in the 1850s was a territory with strong sentiment on both sides of the slavery issue. Butler obtained a claim to 160 aces of land, twelve miles from Atchison, on the banks of the Stranger Creek. His great-great-grandson farms the land to this day. In June, Butler preached the first sermon in Kansas by a Christian minister.

By the middle of August Butler had built a cabin and stopped in Atchison on his way back to Illinois to fetch his family. It was there that the rafting episode took place on August 18, 1855. In addition to Butler’s first-hand account of the episode in his Recollections, Cutler's History of the State of Kansas discusses the episode in his chapter on the border ruffian warfare.

While in Atchison Butler went to the offices of the Squatter Sovereign to get some extra copies to show his friends in Illinois. Butler was waited on by Robert S. Kelley and took the opportunity to announce his free-state views. Kelley organized a meeting that night and the next day Kelley and his cohorts accosted Butler and demanded he sign a string of resolutions denouncing free State men. He refused. A large crowd gathered. Matters were debated. Eventually ...

a vote was taken upon the mode of punishment which ought to be accorded to him [Butler], and to this day it is probably known but to few persons that a decided verdict of death by hanging was rendered; and furthermore, that Mr. Kelley, the teller, by making false returns to the excited mob, save Mr. Butler's life ... the pro-slavery party decided to send Mr. Butler down the Missouri River on a raft.

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