Bryan J. Butts (1826-1891) was born in Pompey, New York, and died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a professor, author, poet, and publisher. By 1855 he was living in Milford, Massachusetts, where he married Harriet N. Greene, a poet, playwright, feminist, and spiritualist, in 1858. Upon their marriage Greene publicly announced keeping her maiden name to protest the "annihilation of personality" that changing her name would entail.
Together they started and edited the Radical Spiritualist newspaper in 1859. It advocated "Spiritualism, Socialism, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, Woman's Rights, Anti-Oath-taking and Office-holding, Temperance, Vegetarianism, Anti-Tobacco (Tea, Coffee) and every other Reform which requires the practice of a higher life." It was renamed the Spiritual Reformer, then Progressive Age (including support for labor reform), and finally Modern Age, before they ceased publishing it in 1866. They were members of Adin Ballou's Hopedale Community, a utopian community in Hopedale, Massachusetts, and during that period they acquired and operated the Hopedale Press publishing company. Sometime around 1870 they opened an elocution school.
Greene died in 1881, and later that year Butts married Sarah B. Butts (b. Bailey) in Milford. On the official record of their marriage they wrote, "Under protest to the subjugation of the wife to the conjugal or financial ownership of her husband, or vice versa." In the 1880s Butts became a professor at the Boston Highland School of Mental Philosophy. He frequently lectured on metaphysical and universal reform topics and contributed articles to A. J. Swarts's Mind Cure journal. He moved to Milwaukee sometime before 1890. Butts wrote to Mary Baker Eddy at least twice in the late 1880s to comment on her work and to apprise her of his.
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Bryan J. Butts (1826-1891) was born in Pompey, New York, and died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a professor, author, poet, and publisher. By 1855 he was living in Milford, Massachusetts, where he married Harriet N. Greene, a poet, playwright, feminist, and spiritualist, in 1858. Upon their marriage Greene publicly announced keeping her maiden name to protest the "annihilation of personality" that changing her name would entail.
Together they started and edited the Radical Spiritualist newspaper in 1859. It advocated "Spiritualism, Socialism, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, Woman's Rights, Anti-Oath-taking and Office-holding, Temperance, Vegetarianism, Anti-Tobacco (Tea, Coffee) and every other Reform which requires the practice of a higher life." It was renamed the Spiritual Reformer, then Progressive Age (including support for labor reform), and finally Modern Age, before they ceased publishing it in 1866. They were members of Adin Ballou's Hopedale Community, a utopian community in Hopedale, Massachusetts, and during that period they acquired and operated the Hopedale Press publishing company. Sometime around 1870 they opened an elocution school.
Greene died in 1881, and later that year Butts married Sarah B. Butts (b. Bailey) in Milford. On the official record of their marriage they wrote, "Under protest to the subjugation of the wife to the conjugal or financial ownership of her husband, or vice versa." In the 1880s Butts became a professor at the Boston Highland School of Mental Philosophy. He frequently lectured on metaphysical and universal reform topics and contributed articles to A. J. Swarts's Mind Cure journal. He moved to Milwaukee sometime before 1890. Butts wrote to Mary Baker Eddy at least twice in the late 1880s to comment on her work and to apprise her of his.
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