Texas Legislators: Past & Present

James P. Butler

Full Name: James P. Butler
Birth date: 1843
Death date: 1872

Terms of Service

House, 12th ⁽¹⁾ ⁽²⁾ ⁽³⁾ ⁽⁴⁾ Legislature
2/8/1870 - 1/14/1873

(1) 12th Legislature, Provisional Session - Qualified and took the oath of office on 2/8/1870. House Journal .
(2) James P. Butler served as subassistant commissioner for the Freedmen's Bureau. He resigned his bureau job and "later was elected to the new legislature as a Republican representative for the district of Walker, Grimes, and Madison counties, p. 183. Overreached on All Sides: the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas Administrators, 1865-1868 1991.
(3) The first appointee having declined, J.P. Butler designated provisional speaker by General J.J. Reynolds, pp. 288-289. Reconstruction in Texas 1910.
(4) Party affiliation, Radical. Texas Almanac for . . . and Emigrant's Guide to Texas .

Biographical Notes and Resources

Other Resources

Listed in "Men who have represented Grimes County in the House of Representatives/State Senate, 1846-1931," pp. 205-209. Includes Date, Legislatures, District, and Source of Data. Early History of Grimes County 1930.
James P. Butler (1843-1872), burial in First Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Lewiston, Niagara County, New York, with wife Mary E.P. Haven. Find a Grave .
Marriage announcement, 10/14/1870, p. 2. " . . . the Hon. J.P. Butler, of Walker, took to himself a wife on the 29th of last month, at the bride's father's residence, near Niagara Falls. He married a Miss Mary E. Haven . . ." Galveston Daily News .
Butler served as subassistant commissioner for the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867, p. 183. Overreached on All Sides: the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas Administrators, 1865-1868 1991.
United States Army, Captain. Prather, Patricia Smith and Jane Clements, From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston, 1993, crediting UNT Press. "In April, Devine left his post and was replaced by James P. Butler, a native of New York and a former captain in the U.S. Army." Portal to Texas History (University of North Texas Libraries) .
Delegate to Constitutional Convention, 1868. Included in "List of Delegates to the Reconstruction Convention, As Announced in Special order No. 213, Dated Headquarters Fifth Military District, New Orleans, LA., April 13th, 1868." Journal of the Reconstruction Convention, Which Met at Austin, Texas, June 1, A.D., 1868 (1870), pp 533-534. Texas Constitutions Digitization Project (Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas at Austin) 2009.
General Reynolds directed the 12th [Provisional] Legislature to assemble on February 8, 1870 "and appointed a carpet-bagger named Butler as speaker for the called term," Volume II, Chapter LXXXIII, The Administrative of Davis, p. 181. Texas Under Many Flags 1930.
George Ruby and James P. Butler mentioned in account of the Constitutional Convention of 1868-1869. The Howling of the Coyotes: Reconstruction Efforts to Divide Texas 1979.