• General Notes

  John Ferguson Butler was named after the uncle who died on the Natchez Trace (or in Natchez, Tennessee).
  John Ferguson was nineteen years old when he married sixteen-year-old Frances Jane Farley.  They continued to live with William Butler (John Ferguson's grandfather who had married Frances Jane Farley's mother, Frances E., on 4 February 1825).  So, that makes William Frances Jane's grandfather-in-law as well as her stepfather and Frances E. is John F's mother-in-law as well as his stepgrandmother.  I don't know if that would make it easier or more difficult to exchange names for Christmas presents... 
  
  From: Mark Collis Butler, Jr. The Butler and Farley Families of Trimble County, Kentucky
  
  "William Butler was 78 when his first great-grandchild was born and was still actively managing the farm, but time was beginning to take its toll.  By 1844 his sight was gone.  On 11 July 1849 his wife, Frances, died.  In 1850, at the age of ninety, he finally applied for a Revolutionary War pension and later that year was granted $20 per year, retroactive to 1831.  Even though blind and infirm, he sold his farm, probably to pay debts, and bought and moved to another, located just below Ewingford on the north side of the Little Kentucky River.  In February 1853 William made his will and on 22 July 1854 he died.  He left his real and personal property for the use of John F. and Frances Jane as long as they lived and then it was to be divided among their children.
  
  From the will and other information the conclusion can be drawn that John F. was not a very good manager and perhaps had other problems as well.  Seven years later, on 16 July 1861, faced with the outbreak of the Civil War, the possible loss of his slaves, and no one knows how many other difficulties, he shot himself.  Frances Jane was left with eight children, all girls but one, possibly young William, then twenty-three, and a small farm.  There is no record of how she managed to survive, but by 23 March 1873, when she died (no doubt from exhaustion), all her surviving daughters except two, Sophia and Edmonia, were married."
  

Details of John Ferguson's family with Frances Jane Farley