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Subject: Nellie Nichols Butler obit
Date: 25 Apr 2004 18:21:53 -0600

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Surnames: Nichols Butler
Classification: Query

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http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/HCH.2ACEB/4297

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Mary Ellen Nichols Butler Obituary
Hardy, Nuckolls County, Nebraska
September 1955


MRS. NELLIE BUTLER
Mary Ellen Nichols was born May 4, 1856 near Fort Dodge, Iowa. Her parents were George and Sarah Nichols who moved with their family to a homestead near Linwood, Nebraska about 1867. Mary Ellen, or Nellie as she was known to most of her family and friends, attended rural school near Linwood. Later she taught schools at Scuyler and David City. She married May 9, 1878 to Ransom M. Butler at David City. She and her husband saw much of the Midwest from an ox-drawn prairie schooner, living briefly in Exeter and Superior before settling in Hardy in the spring of 1880. Mrs. Butler lived by herself in the home in Hardy after the death of her husband in 1931. The past few years she has been at the home of her daughter, Belle, near Hardy part of each year and with another daughter, Dena, at Sterling, Nebraska, where she died on September 2, 1955 at the age of 99 years, 3 months and 29 days.

To Mr. And Mrs. R.M. Butler were born 9 children, three dying in infancy. The eldest son Jefferson Lee, died in 1941. Surviving are Fred Butler, Clinton J. Butler, Mrs. Lena Murdock, Mrs. Dena Glasgow, Mrs. Belle Fuller, 19 grandchildren, 50 great grandchildren and 5 great great grandchildren. A good neighbor, a wonderful mother and beloved by all was Mrs. Butler.

Funeral services were held at the Butler home in Hardy at 10:30 AM on Monday, September 5, conducted by Rev. William Doran. Burial, in charge of Scott’s Mortuary, was in the Hardy Cemetery.


MR. AND MRS. R.M. BUTLER
Came To Hardy 75 years Ago

The Butler home in Hardy was one of the first houses built in town. Ransom and Nellie came to Hardy just as the railroad was being put through and the town laid out in the spring of 1880. Ranse was a carpenter, bricklayer, brick maker, village marshal, road overseer and farmer. He built a brick yard on the creek east of Hardy and supplied the brick for many of the buildings in Hardy and surrounding towns. He contracted several of the first homes and business buildings in town, graded some of the first road and built some of the first bridges. The ox yoke which pulled the prairie schooner which brought the Butlers to Hardy is still in the community, owned by Howard Bucknell. While Ranse was building the town, Nellie was raising a large family who went out into the world and have been a credit to their parents and their home town.

Five years ago the Hardy Herald printed a history of the Butler family. At that time Mrs. Butler recalled that the principal form of entertainment in the early days were parties and dancing in the homes. She would invite a group of young folks to their home and Ranse would play the fiddle for the square dancing.

Relatives and old friends from a distance come to attend the funeral services for Mrs. Butler.

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