Butler Township took its name after Gen. Richard Butler, an Irish aristocrat who had distinguished himself with the Continental Army during the American Revolution, according to Butler County Historical Society.

Butler was a contemporary of George Washington, who admired Butler’s skill as a military officer and his “familiarity with Indian life and affairs,” according to 19th century historian William H. Egle.

Throughout the 1700s, Delaware and Shawnee tribes populated hunting camps or villages within the county, according to Butler County Historical Society. The Iroquois — which consisted of the five allied tribes: Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas — also lived in the region at that time.

The French made up the first white men to settle in the county, according to authors Stephen M. Pozar and Jean B. Purvis. These early settlers, and claims by France to what was then known as the Ohio Valley, ultimately led a 21-year-old George Washington through Butler County in 1753.

Virginia Gov. Robert Dinwiddie had tasked Washington with delivering a letter to the French-held Fort LeBoeuf, one which demanded France relinquish its claims to the Ohio Valley in the name of British sovereignty, according to Butler County Historical Society.

Washington’s expedition, now commemorated with a self-guided driving tour known as Washington’s Trail, would place him in the line of fire of an Indigenous man allied with French. It’s not clear whether the man targeted Washington himself or his guide, Christopher Gist, when he fired, but he missed.

After capturing the man, Washington and Gist released him, according to Washington and Gist’s journals. A historic marker near present-day Evans City commemorates the encounter.

The French ignored Washington’s letter, according to military historian Edward G. Lengel. The French and Indian War and then the American Revolution would eventually grant the U.S. some control over certain areas in Pennsylvania.

But it wasn’t until the end of the Northwest Indian War — when the U.S. faced off against an alliance of Great Lakes tribes and British soldiers — that Americans would consider the Ohio Valley safe for settlement, wrote Pozar and Purvis. U.S. Major General “Mad Anthony” Wayne routed these communities from the region following the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, an event which propelled Indigenous displacement further west and led to the formation of the new state of Ohio, according to Encyclopedia Britannica contributor Michael Ray.

Irish-born settler William Kearns became the first documented resident of what would become Butler Township in 1795, according to Butler County Historical Society.

Butler County first formed as a municipal body in 1800, then was divided into 13 separate townships, including Butler Township, in 1804. Property lots laid out for the borough of Butler first sold at auction in 1803, wrote Pozar and Purvis.

Two major waves of immigrants populated Butler County in the following years, according to Butler County Historical Society. The first, which consisted mostly of people from Ireland, Scotland, other parts of the British Isles and Germany, generally sought land and entered the U.S. before the 1820s, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

The second wave, which generally sought jobs, came spurred by the tide of the Industrial Revolution during the 1840s and ’50s.

Sawmills, gristmills and other enterprises figured substantially in the township’s early industrial history, according to historian C. Hale Sipe. The first successful oil drilling operation in U.S. history, which happened just north of Butler County in 1859, ignited a boom that eventually swept the region, wrote Pozar and Purvis.

“The wealth brought to the county by the oil industry had a dramatic effect on the borough of Butler,” wrote Pozar and Purvis. “Unlike the boom towns of the oil regions, which often disappeared overnight, the county seat grew, prospered and stayed. It became the county’s center for transportation, industry and commercial activity. Banks, hotels, stores and a new county hospital would be erected to meet the demands of the borough’s new, ambitious role.”

The arrival of the railroad in 1871 and the establishment of the Standard Plate Glass firm, which used natural gas from the region to produce sheet glass, also contributed toward the township’s rapid growth, according to the Butler County Historical Society.

Between 1870 and 1900, the township’s population would explode from 1,933 to 10,853, wrote Pozar and Purvis.

In 1902 engineer John M. Hansen, president of the Standard Steel Car Company, established a plant to produce steel railroad cars in the township, wrote Pozar and Purvis. A real estate boom followed, bringing with it the formation of communities such as Lyndora and West Butler, wrote Sipe.

The company took inspiration from a rapid transformation in the railroad car industry. Steel rail cars demonstrated greater reliability amid safety concerns, such as fire, than wooden rail cars, and they were steadily replacing wooden cars, according to historian John H. White.

In 1930 the Standard Steel Car Company merged with the Pullman Car and Manufacturing Corporation to become the Pullman Standard Car Company, then one of the largest builders of steel freight cars in the United States, wrote Pozar and Purvis. The Butler plant continued operating until 1984, when Dallas-based Trinity Industries purchased the plant, according to the Butler Eagle. The site was demolished in 2005, according to the Butler.

In 1927 the American Rolling Mill Company, an Ohio-based company, bought patents and a plant in Butler from the Forged Steel Wheel Company, which by then made up part of Columbia Steel, according to the Butler Eagle. Patents and production methods included in this deal “revolutionized the steel industry and was considered one of the greatest inventions of its time,” said author David E. Todd.

“At that time, the plant employed about 1,600 employees,” Todd added.

The American Rolling Mill Company, or Armco, would operate the Butler Works, known by many residents as “The Mill,” until the U.S. steel industry’s decline and the 1999 sale of the site to AK Steel, according to Butler Historical Society.

In 1936, six years after Butler entered the stainless steel market, Butler Armco launched the world’s first continuous zinc-coating line, writes Todd, a former “Mill” employee. “Following this achievement, the Butler Works became the first plant to coat steel with aluminum in 1939,” Todd wrote. “About this time, Butler started the production of silicon steel for the electrical industry.”

1936 also saw the formation of the American Bantam Car Company, which would design the first Jeep for U.S. military use during World War II, according to the Butler Eagle.

Bantam had initially built economy cars, but switched course after the U.S. Army requested prototype reconnaissance cars in 1940, according to the Butler Eagle. Bantam’s life span as a company proved brief and hard, with the company closing down for good in 1956, but the Jeep would claim its place as one of the most popular and enduring inventions to emerge from Butler Township, according to the Butler Eagle.

Butler Township’s population numbers 17,223, as of the 2020 U.S. Census. Major institutions within the township today include Butler County Community College, the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works, much of the Butler Area School District and Butler Memorial Hospital, owned and operated by Butler Health System (which merged with Excela Health in 2023).