Lieutenant Colonel William Butler (died 1789) was a Pennsylvania officer during the American Revolutionary War, known for his leadership in the Battle of Monmouth, the burning of the Indian villages at Unadilla and Oquaga, and in the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition.
Butler's exact year of birth is unknown, but he was probably born in the mid-1740s. His family emigrated from Ireland sometime before 1760 and settled in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. In the late 1760s he worked as a frontier fur trader near Pittsburgh with his brother Richard.
He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army upon the formation of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment on October 25, 1776. He was retired from the Army on January 1, 1783. He was an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Richard Butler
alt=Faded, damaged old map showing the Natchez District, which is shaped roughly like the left half of an isosceles triangle|thumb|The American [[Natchez District, as pictured in a "Sketch of the Inhabited Parts of the Missisippi Territory Adjoining to the Great River", dated November 9, 1802, included an alligator, and the residences of D. Clark and R. Butler (NAID 191671882)]]
The papers of his son Richard Butler (1777–1820) are held at Louisiana State University. Richard Butler also became a soldier. In 1798 Butler traveled the Ohio and Mississippi to deliver dispatches to Isaac Guion. He married Margaret Farar in 1799. Margaret Farar was the daughter of Benjamin Farar Sr. and Elizabeth Galliard. He settled in the lower Mississippi River valley after he retired from the service. According to a former U.S. Army officer named James Sterrett, writing in 1811, around 1800 or 1801 General James Wilkinson had embezzled public money to buy slaves from a Mr. Jones in Maryland; the slaves were bought on credit by John Ellis, Richard Butler, and others, while "the notes" were held by Abijah Hunt. Butler's uncle Thomas Butler died at Richard Butler's "farm near New-Orleans" in 1805. In 1805, the couple "purchased Ormond Plantation, in German Coast County (St. Charles Parish), from the widow of Pierre Trepagnier. At Ormond, named for the Irish family seat of one of his ancestors, he planted sugar." The couple had lived at Woodstock near Pinckneyville, Mississippi. Their plantation was bordered on the east by that of William Yerby. The Butlers also owned a house built in 1817 by architect Henry S. Latrobe on Royal Street in New Orleans. He died first. His sister and her husband inherited the New Orleans house.