John Buttram

John Buttram (about 1773-1844) was one of the first settlers on New River in present-day Scott County, settling in what is now the New River community. He and his wife, Jane, were wealthy and were the most prolific slave-owners in Scott County.

See Also: The Scott County Lineage Project

Biography

Born sometime about 1773 in Rowan, N.C., John Buttram was the son of William Buttram (1735-1806) and Margaret Willis (1733-1784). The Buttram family came to America from England in the early 17th century, with John Buttram’s fourth-great-grandfather, John Butterum (1610-1686).

John’s siblings may have included Elizabeth, William Jr., Margaret, Nicholas, Andrew, James, Cornelius, Levi, and Seedy.

John Buttram married Jane Stephenson (1764-1865), who was also from Rowan County, N.C. She was the daughter of James Stevenson and Sarah O’Kelly.

John and Jane had several children, including William, James Andrew, Margaret, William, Rebecca, Bailey, and Mary.

Bailey Buttram served as sheriff of Scott County in the 1860s. Like their parents, Bailey and his brother, William, became prolific landowners in the New River area, owning several thousand acres of land. William married Rebecca Reed, the daughter of Revolutionary War veteran John Reed and brother to Isaac Reed. Isaac Reed was elected Scott County’s first Trustee in 1850, and his son-in-law, John Lewallen, was elected Scott County’s first Sheriff.

Margaret and Rebecca appear to have married brothers, Joseph and William Cecil, sons of Benjamin Cecil and Priscilla Boyleston. Mary may have married into the family, as well. That family did not settle in Scott County. However, another of Benjamin and Priscilla’s children, Samuel Cecil (1786-1850), had a son, James Timothy Cecil, who married Pharaba Reed, the daughter of Isaac Reed and Phariba Hatfield. They became the patriarch and matriarch of the Cecil family that later became prominent in the Helenwood area. Their grandson, Beaty Cecil, served as sheriff and held other offices in Scott County and at the state level, and married Bailey Buttram’s daughter, Polly Elmira Buttram.

Move to Scott County

It is difficult to ascertain exactly how the Buttrams arrived in present-day Scott County, due to conflicting records. Genealogical sources usually say that Bailey Buttram was born in Wayne County, Ky. and moved to the New River area with his parents around 1830. In her brook, County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote that Bailey Buttram and his brother, William, came to New River from Virginia in 1850. In his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, historian H. Clay Smith cites a grandson of Bailey Buttram as saying that John and Jane Buttram moved to New River from Georgia and that all of their children were born at New River.

At time of the Civil War

Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote in County Scott that Bailey Buttram brought “several slaves” from Virginia, and that those slaves helped clear the land where the New River lumber mill was later built.

H. Clay Smith wrote in Dusty Bits that Buttram’s parents, John and Jane Buttram, acquired several slaves, and that Jane Buttram — who outlived her husband by many years — owned at least 20 slaves. Smith also wrote that Buttram owned three slaves at the outset of the war: brothers named Jack and Noah, and their mother.

According to the 1860 slave census, Jane Buttram was the most prolific slaveowner in Scott County at the dawn of the Civil War. She was one of 10 slaveowners in Scott County at the time the 1860 census was taken, and owned 22 slaves (of the 59 total slaves owned in Scott County in 1860). Sixteen of the 22 were minors, and nine were younger than age 10. There were also two elderly free black women who lived with Buttram.

This almost certainly verifies Smith’s account. In Enclave: Scott County’s Unique Role in the Civil War, the Independent Herald wrote that Buttram was “an elderly Huntsville widow who owned a total of 22 slaves,” and that most of her slaves had been freed by 1861. (As a footnote: In Enclave, the IH reported that a William Bashers owned one slave in 1861. There was a William Bashers who lived in Scott County in 1860. He was a Huntsville farmer. However, the IH research was based on a transcribed copy of the 1860 slave schedule. Upon further review, including an examination of the actual hand-written slave schedule from the 1860 census, the IH believes that the name William Bashers was almost certainly a transcription error, and that the name could’ve been William Buttram instead.)

However, there is no mention in the 1860 census of a slave owner named Bailey Buttram, which would seem to refute Smith’s account of Bailey Buttram owning three slaves — unless they had already been granted freedom by the time the 1860 census was taken. But Bailey Buttram does not appear in the 1850 slave census, either. It does not appear that Bailey Buttram owned slaves.

While Bailey Buttram’s brother, William Buttram, may or may not have owned one slave in 1860, he had a daughter who owned several slaves. She was also named Jane. Jane Buttram (1831-1916) married John Potter (1828-1914). In County Scott, Sanderson wrote that John Potter’s father, Jackie Potter, owned “a number of slaves” at the Vanderpool farm on New River. At the outbreak of the war, Sanderson wrote, John Potter joined the Union forces. According to the 1860 slave schedule, John Potter owned four slaves.

Death

John Buttram died around 1844. It is not clear where he was buried. Jane Stevenson Buttram died in 1865. It’s also unclear where she was buried.