Benjamin Franklin Butler (December 14, 1795 - November 8, 1858), lawyer and politician, was descended from Jonathan Butler, who settled at Saybrook, Connecticut, in 1724. Jonathan's grandson, Medad, migrated from Branford, Connecticut, to Kinderhook Landing (Stuyvesant) in Columbia County, New York. Here he married Hannah Tylee in 1794, and here their eldest son, Benjamin, was born the next year. After completing the scanty education offered by the district school, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1817. For four years thereafter, he was a partner at Albany in the office of Martin Van Buren, for whom he retained a lifelong admiration and affection. The year after his admission to the bar, he married Harriet Allen, whose parents (the mother a Quaker related to Benjamin Franklin) had moved from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Hudson, New York, about the same time that his own father had left Branford. As Butler rose in his profession, honors...