The First Families Project - SC - Edgefield County - Butler Family when he died. Judge O'Neall, in his "Sketches of the Bench and Bar of South Carolina," 1859, closes his notice of Judge Butler in these words: "In 1850, when Secession burst upon South Carolina, Judge Butler did not favor it - he was for a Southern Congress; and, in 1851, and 1852, he met the issue and South Carolina sustained him." Judge Butler was married twice. His first wife, Susan Ann Simkins, the second daughter of Colonel Eldred Simkins, in a few months after her marriage, he followed to the tomb. His second wife, Miss Harriet Hayne, the daughter of Wm. Edward Hayne, Esq., of Charleston, he, soon after the birth of their only child, Mrs. Haigood, of Barnwell, saw languish and die. He ever after lived a widower. His mother and sister took charge of his lonely child. At his house was seen the venerable face of his mother as its mistress - her unexampled fortitude and cheerfulness sustained him in the dark hours of sorrow for the loss of wife, brothers, and sister. But I must pause. You all, my readers, knew Judge Butler. You have often joined in his merry laugh - you all remember his florid face, his head of snow, his dancing eyes, and his manly form. But you do not all know that which distinguished him more than most men, his kind heart. No man was ever more devoted