Ames, Blanche Butler, 1847-1939

Ames, Blanche Butler, 1847-1939

Blanche Butler Ames was born on March 2, 1847 in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her mother, Sarah Hildreth Butler, had been a Shakespearean actress before marrying Blanche's father, Benjamin Butler, a Massachussetts politician who became a controversial Civil War general.

Blanche attended local public school until at age 13 she was sent to be educated at at the Academy of the Visitation in Washington, DC where she described the sectional tension affecting northern and southern students at the eve of the Civil War.

After the war Blanche and her family resided in Washington and Massachusetts, and she became acquainted with Civil War general Adelbert Ames, who had served with her father. They married on July 21, 1870. Her husband was governor of Mississippi from 1874-1876, and her letters to her family detail the first-hand experiences of life as a Northern woman living in the South during the Reconstruction.

In 1871, Blanche gave birth to a son Butler, the family eventually growing to six children, one of whom, Blanche Ames (1878-1969), later became a prominent suffrage activist.

Blanche Butler Ames died in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1939.

Source: Chronicles from the Nineteenth Century: Family Letters of Blanche Butler and Adelbert Ames Married July 21st, 1870, vol. 1., Clinton, MA, 1957; Ames Family History Mass.gov (June 04, 2003)