Sarah Hildreth was born in
Dracut, Massachusetts, the daughter of Dr. Israel Hildreth, a physician in the
Lowell area, and Dolly Jones. At sixteen, she went to Boston for formal training in dramatics and later performed all around 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 had four children, three surviving to adulthood:
Blanche (1847–1939), who would marry
Adelbert Ames; Paul (1852–1918; their first son, also named Paul, had died in 1850 at the age of five); and Ben-Israel (1855–1881). She retired from stage performance after her marriage. Benjamin Butler served as a Union general during the
American Civil War and then, at Sarah's urging, pursued his political ambitions. In March 1866, Butler argued in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the United States in
Ex parte Milligan, in which the Court held, against the United States, that military commission trials could not replace civilian trials when civilian courts were operating. Butler then turned his eyes to Congress and was elected in 1866 on a platform of civil rights and opposition to President Andrew Johnson's weak
Reconstruction policies. Sarah encouraged Benjamin's support for social reform, including women's suffrage and the eight-hour workday for federal employees.
Death Sarah Hildreth Butler died on April 8, 1876, at the age of 59, and is buried at
her family's private cemetery in Lowell. ==References==