18 Facts About Justin Butterfield

Justin Butterfield was one of the foremost Gentile defenders of the rights of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Illinois during the final period of Joseph Smith's leadership at Nauvoo.

Justin Butterfield was born in Keene, New Hampshire in 1790.

Justin Butterfield entered Williams College at age seventeen; a work-study student, he simultaneously studied college-level courses and served as a schoolteacher, as was allowed by the laws of that day.

Justin Butterfield married Elizabeth Butterfield nee Pearce of Schoharie, New York, and the couple had eight children.

Justin Butterfield argued both cases before juries with separate defenses of the principle of freedom of speech.

Justin Butterfield served the writ on the commanding general who was holding his client.

The general evaded compliance, and Justin Butterfield was branded as disloyal by the public.

Justin Butterfield became one of the pioneer attorneys of Chicago at a time when the village at the foot of Lake Michigan was beginning to establish its supremacy over all of the other settlements of the American Midwest.

Justin Butterfield played a key role in helping Illinois businesses, and the State as a whole, work out from under the effects of the Panic of 1837.

In summer 1843, Joseph Smith, the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, asked Justin Butterfield to defend him in federal court.

The Nauvoo leader had been arrested by Missouri peace officers on a variety of charges related to the Mormons' time in that state some years earlier; in order to avoid extradition and possible lynching, Justin Butterfield asked a federal court sitting in Illinois to grant habeas corpus to Smith.

The Springfield lawyer attacked Justin Butterfield for being one of the least-partisan applicants, with among the weakest ties to the Whig Party.

Justin Butterfield, appointed in July 1849, would head the Land Office for three years.

At the height of his career, Justin Butterfield was permanently disabled by a stroke.

Justin Butterfield did not resume the practice of law, and never again enjoyed good health, dying in Chicago on October 23,1855.

Justin Butterfield reinvested much of his legal fees in Chicago real estate, and left wealth to his family.

Justin Butterfield's remains were originally interred in a vault at City Cemetery, and were moved and reinterred on May 31,1871, at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library announced plans in July 2013 to hold a Springfield, Illinois re-enactment of the trial on September 24,2013, with a discussion of the habeas corpus principles Justin Butterfield had defended in court.