English family establishes new life in new world
By JUDY LILLY
Emanuel Z. and Jane (Bevan) Butcher migrated from England to America in 1869 and subsequently
spent the rest of their lives establishing their home and family around Solomon, Kan.

Colorful people (the mother forfeited her share of a large English estate to marry a commoner and the youngest son owned a Wild West Show in the early 1900s), the Butchers typified the immigrant family which faced hardship and tragedy but brought the qaulities of optimism, perserverence and
ingenuity to the state of Kansas.

A history of this family was researched and compiled from 1965 to 1971 by Claude Raymond Butcher of Lake Oswego, Ore. It appeared in the The Clay Center Dispatch in March of 1978 in the column "Wakefield History" by Annetta M. Hayes. Descendants of E.Z. and Jane Butcher presently
live in Central Kansas and across the country.

Here is the story of their beginnings in America and Kansas: Influenced by the Kansas Land Emigration
Company which was promoting the sale of land in Kansas in 1869, Emanuel Zerubbabel Butcher and his wife, Jane, left Winchester, England, to relocate on American soil. With their three children and several trunks of possessions and keepsakes, the family sailed on the Guion steamship line,
on a new type of semi-steam-propelled ship, and arrived in New York on Oct.
6,1869.

The group of 76 English immigrants, also called the Nebraska Party, traveled
by train across the East and the newly-settled West to Junction City,
Kan. They were some of the first of several groups of English colonists
brought by the Emigration Company and the founders of the settlement of
Wakefield in Clay County.

Child died
For some reason, the Butcher family never became a part of the English
settlement. A day or two after they arrived in Kansas, the tiniest member of
the family, 15-month-old Xennia Louisa, died of cholera contracted on
the trip. The family remained in Junction City instead of joining the venture in
Wakefield. They lived through a bitterly cold winter in a converted corn crib,
while E.Z. worked where he could — digging a cellar or cooking in a restaurant.
In June of 1870, the Butchers left Junction City with its high prices and
memories of death and suffering and headed south and west, pausing very
briefly in the rough, cowboy town of Abilene before settling in Solomon.
They lived for a time at the home of a Mr. Spratt, and later moved to a house
on East 5th Street. Butcher worked as a cook in restaurants in both Solomon
and Abilene.

Unlike many of the English immigrants who could not adjust to the extremes
in temperatures of the Kansas frontier, the Butcher family apparently
adapted well to this area at a time when Indians still passed casually
through settlements, when Marshall Wild Bill Hickock opposed lawlessness
in Abilene and when drought, depression and grasshoppers destroyed the
hopes of many homesteaders.

In the decade that followed their arrival in Solomon, three more children
were born and the growing family located on a farm, which later became
the George Parks farm, and concentrated on raising sheep and watermelon.

Lost wife and mother
The death of Jane Agnes Butcher on March 8, 1881, nearly devasted her husband
and children during an already difficult winter. Money and adequate clothing were scarce; a number of
their sheep froze to death during the winter blizzards of the mid-1880s. Butcher was obliged to keep his job as cook or baker in Abilene and Solomon to support his family.

E.Z. and his family managed to survive the roller-coaster economic conditions
in Kansas during the 1880s and the early 1890s. Now young adults, the
children began to leave home for various
reasons — to marry or to seek adventure
in the West. Butcher made an
ill-fated run in the Opening of the Cherokee
Strip in September of 1893; the
following July he lost his 19-year-old
daughter, Edith Butcher Leasure,
when she died in childbirth.
To review his sagging spirits, this
middle-aged English immigrant seized
an opportunity to operate a meat market
like the one he had helped his parents
with as a boy in Winchester. In
1895, he rented the old Cusick Building
in Solomon, established living quarters
upstairs and opened the City Meat
Market.
In 1901 he made a final trip to England
to claim a portion of an inheritance,
left to him as the husband of
Jane Agnes Bevan, whose mother had
been of the Hunting family and of royal
ancestry. Although the principal share
of the large estate was denied the
Butcher family because Jane Agnes
had married beneath her station, her
husband and children received the interest
on the share.
With this inheritance, E.Z. and his
remaining children were able to expand
their respective businesses. Perhaps
for the first time, this family
from immigrant stock could look forward
to the prosperous future that
Kansas promoters had promised over
30 years before.
•k -fr -tr
Here are the children of Emanuel
Zerrubbabel Butcher (b. July 15, 1842,
Dorchester, England; d. Jan. 4, 1921,
Solomon) and Jane Agnes Bevan (b.
Sept. 20, 1840, Bristol, England; d.
March 8,1881, Solomon):
Clara Socratina, b. Aug. 22, 1865,
England; d. Feb. 1, 1944, Salina; m.
Thomas Leasure. William Henry, b.
Feb. 19, 1867, England; d. Nov. 1,1949;
m. Hattie May Fugatt. Xennia Louisa,.
b. June 3, 1868, England; d. Oct. 12,
1869, Junction City. Edward Emanuel,
b. Sept. 27, 1872, Solomon; d. Jan. 10,
1927; m. Lucy Jane Fugatt; Edith
Agnes, b. Aug. 18, 1874; d. July 9,1899;;
m. William Leasure. Charles Clarence,
b. Oct. 27, 1877; d. Nov. 18,