Sarah Hildreth Butler

Who was Sarah Hildreth Butler?

Sarah Hildreth Butler was an American stage actress. She was the wife of Benjamin Franklin Butler, a controversial political general in the American Civil War and later a Congressman and Governor of Massachusetts.

Sarah Hildreth was born in Dracut, Massachusetts, the daughter of Dr. Israel Hildreth, a noted physician of the Lowell area, and Dolly Jones. At sixteen, she went to Boston for formal training in dramatics, performing all over the country. On May 16, 1844, she married Benjamin Butler, then a rising lawyer, at Saint Anne's Episcopal Church in Lowell; she was 27, he 25. The Butlers would have four children, three surviving to adulthood: Blanche, who would later marry Adelbert Ames; Paul; and Ben-Israel. She retired from stage performance after her marriage.

Her husband, Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler's business partners included Sarah's brother Fisher, and her brother-in-law, W. P. Webster.

Sarah Hildreth Butler died on April 8, 1876, at the age of 59, and is buried at her family's private cemetery in Lowell.