according to census documents, he was a miller. He ran the grist mill owned by his father-inlaw, Ennis Pippen.

His tombstone reads:

"John Butler

Co f

6 Fla Regt

CSA

Aug 18 1899"

just to the right of John Butler is a homemade cement tombstone that is in cursive that reads - "Mary P Butler." This is the tombstone of Mary Elizabeth Pippen Butler - wife to John Butler.

CIVIL WAR: John, along with his next younger brother, Job Butler, enlisted in the 6th Florida Infantry Regiment, CSA, on February 11, 1862. Job and John came down with "fever" while training with the Regiment at the Chattahoochee Arsenal/Hospital in Gadsen County prior to going north to enter the war. As a result, they were left behind at the Arsenal when the regiment started for Tennessee. It seems likely that they were a luckier part of the Yellow Fever epidemic that killed 71 men (buried at the Chattahoochee Hospital) from the Regiment in the months before they left Florida. John did well and rejoined the regiment within a few weeks. Job did not rejoin the regiment for almost 4 months.

In August of 1863, John was granted a 30 day furlough because he had been declared disabled by the Surgeons Board in Knoxville, Tennessee. None of the records reflect whether the disability was due to illness - possibly a flare up of the fever, or wounds . He received $9.90 Confederate to pay for his rations during convalesence. Shortly after this, John was charged $18.80 for losing his "gun and accouterment" (he was apparently unconcious) while being transported to the hospital.

HOMESTEAD: In the late 1800s, the Federal Government decided to dispose of the remaining land that it held in Florida. Sometime in the 1890s, John and Mary Butler applied for a Homestead Land Grant on a tract of land about six miles south of Marianna in Jackson County on the edge of a community called Mulberry Grove. The family moved to the land and were farming it to prove their homestead when John died in 1899. Mary kept the farm and worked it with her 8 children remaining at home. She received her Certificate of Grant for 39.97 acres south of Marianna in 1905.