Volume Eight

Piecing Together the Butler Puzzle is Volume 8 in the Jacksonport Historical Society’s series “Jacksonport Through the Generations.” The family pioneers, James and Maria Gallagher Butler, were both born in Ireland but met and married in Canada. They immigrated to Door County in the 1870s. The home they built in West Jacksonport, along with other family homesteads, is still in use. James and Maria had eleven children. Their oldest son, Thomas and his German-born wife, Mary Gaeth, raised a family of thirteen in Jacksonport on a farm on Junction Road. Later Thomas and Mary moved to the house surrounded by a white picket fence that stands in the center of the village on highway 57. Photographs dating as far back as 1891 as well as research and memories from many many family members collaborated in helping Phyllis Zatlin assemble the Butler puzzle pieces.