1856

On March 3, Howard Russell Butler is born in New York City. He is the son of lawyer and author of satirical verse William Allen Butler (1825—1902) and Mary Russell Marshall (1828—1919), the daughter of Charles Henry Marshall (1792—1865), a sea captain and an owner of the Black-Ball Packet-line.

Charles H. Marshall, a packet ship built by William H. Webb in 1869 and named after Butler’s grandfather, was the last packet designed and built for the Black Ball Line, for which Charles was proprietor and manager. Charles’s father and grandfather were also Nantucket-born sea captains.

 Butler’s father, <em>William Allen Butler</em., served as president of the American Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.