Cemetery tour keeps Butler history alive
The names Sullivan, Mitchell and Lowry once loomed large in the history of Butler, but now their family lines are all but ended and their graves all but forgotten.
Keeping their stories alive was the aim of the Butler County Historical Society’s event on Saturday, Sept. 10. “Digging Deeper: A Cemetery Tour" was held at the North Side Cemetery, 1002 N. Main St.
The family plots in the oldest section of the cemetery were visited by three tour groups while Jennifer Ford, executive director of the historical society; Deb Kruger, associate professor of history at Butler County Community College; and Margaret Hewitt, special collections librarian at the Butler Area Public Library, shared the families’ histories with a 21st century audience.
There were no actors in historical garb. Ford said the tour was designed to present a more in-depth accounting of the history of Butler and each family’s place in it.
For example, said Kruger, the Lowry family was famous in its time for owning the Lowry House Hotel at the corner of Main and Jefferson streets for 50 years.
William Mitchell married Annie Ziegler in 1866 and they had five daughters, Kruger said, but Donald Kelly was the last surviving grandchild when he died.
“William Lowery was a Civil War veteran and lived on the Diamond,” Kruger said. “But his only surviving grandson was shot down in the Pacific during World War II.”
Ensign Donald Kelly, 24, a graduate of Grove City College, was declared missing in 1944, only a month after arriving in the Pacific, and after a year was declared dead on April 14, 1945.
“I can’t imagine what the family went through,” Kruger said.
“That branch is all gone. There may be some distant cousins,” she added.
“The house and the hotel are gone. But when they tore down the house, women brought out boxes of paper. We’re just starting to dig into them.
“We’ll be years going through them all and deciphering the penmanship,” Kruger said.
Ford’s subject was the Sullivan/Shaw family because, she said, the society's headquarters is in the Lowrie-Sullivan-Shaw House at 123 W. Diamond St.
Butler’s only United States senator, Walter Lowrie, and his wife, Amelia, lived in the brick home that was built in 1828 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to the historical society, Lowrie sold the house in 1836 to local attorney George Washington Smith, who lived in the house for three years. He later sold the house and grounds to Charles Craven Sullivan in 1839.
The house and its furnishings were bequeathed to the society in 1986, by Isabelle Shaw, a descendent of Charles Sullivan.
Hewitt’s subject was the Mitchell family.
“The family patriarch, William Z. Mitchell, was a way, way prominent attorney in the 1840s to 1890s. He lived in the Diamond,” Hewitt said.
“He had three sons who all studied the law and for awhile it looked like they would form a legal dynasty. But two of the sons died in their early 20s, and the third son (got) into legal trouble for forging checks,” she said.
Mitchell also had a daughter with his second wife, Margaret Broder, who also came from a prominent family of judges and lawyers.
That daughter, Louie Mitchell, “was a bit of a character,” Hewitt said. “She was involved in society parties. She and her husband moved away and got into a spot of financial trouble — unpaid department store bills. Today, they would total $27,000.”
“They separated and she lived until 1915. She died very sadly of an accidental chloroform overdose. She was 36 when she died,” Hewitt said. “There is no one carrying on the Mitchell name.”
Keeping history alive is the reason for the Digging Deeper tour, said Joyce Rauschenberger, president of the historical society board.
“There is such great history in Butler, and so many of our founding fathers and mothers have stories that need to be told,” Rauschenberger said.
She praised Kruger for the research she did in preparing the presentations for the three families.
“All of their stories are very interesting. We make sure everyone has an opportunity to hear about our founding fathers and others,” she said. “They had no descendants; we don’t want their stories lost in time.”
That’s what brought Desiree Hills of Bruin and her mother, Denise Johnston, of Butler, out for the 11:15 a.m. tour Saturday.
Hills said, “I learned about this through the historical society’s Facebook (page). It’s important for the younger generation to get to know history.”
“Most of my family is buried here,” Johnston said. “This is a great way to learn a little history.”
While Ford praised the cemetery workers for “doing a great job keeping this place maintained,” she said she hoped the tour would lead to the formation of a group focused exclusively on doing grave maintenance in the older section of the cemetery.
