Butler-Laing family.

The Butlers were a 19th century family from the northeastern United States. The centerpiece of the collection is Caroline H. Butler Laing (1804-1892), daughter of Thomas Butler (1769-1822), wife of Edward Butler (1797-1849) and then of Hugh Laing (1783-1869).

Caroline and Edward Butler lived in Northampton, Mass. and had nine children. Edward was in the mercantile business and did much traveling to and from China. His wife accompanied him on one of these trips in 1836-1837. To help support their large family, Caroline took up writing fiction for the magazines in the 1840s and intensified her production after the death of Edward in 1849, publishing children's books as well. In 1851 she married Hugh Laing and moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. After his death in 1869 she traveled to Rome to spend over a year with her daughter Harriet who was living there with her husband Thomas Buchanan Read. Upon her return to the U.S. she wrote a three volume children's history of Rome. She frequently visited her grown children around the northeast. She died in 1892 at age 88.

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