The Butler Family Papers consist of correspondence, legal papers, manuscript writings, financial papers, printed items, records and photographs which chronicle the lives of the Butler family members from their arrival in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1809 through the mid-twentieth century. Early documents such as depositions, legal papers and correspondence pertain primarily to the political and judicial career of Thomas Butler, a Congressional representative, an attorney and a judge. Highlights of the early material include correspondence from Jacques Villere, William C.C. Claiborne and Henry Clay and a Spanish land grant and proclamation signed by Carondelet. Other antebellum material, family and business correspondence, records and financial papers, reflects social life and customs and the economics of the planter and slave-owning class. Records include slave lists and a deposition on the health of a slave.
Financial papers consist of accounts, receipt, bills and acts of sale for both land and slaves.
Correspondence relates primarily to family news and plantation business. One letter from a slave owner to a slave woman whom he had sold reflects the relationship between owner and slave and the breaking up of families in slave sales. Letters written by Anna Butler to her family between 1849 and 1850 discuss life at the White House, where she lived during Zachary Taylor's administration. She attended Congressional sessions, and in her letters to families she comments on the debates raging in both houses as well as the major political personalities. Civil War letters from Confederate officers to Butler family members provide personal narratives of the war on the Gulf Coast and in Vicksburg, Mississippi and Tennessee.