E. C. Butler and B. A. Upton
Edward C. Butler was born October 24, 1844, at Bartlett, New Hampshire, and went with his parents to New Glouster, Cumberland County, Maine, when he was a child. During his sixteenth year he went to Indiana, and saw his seventeenth birthday in United States service. He served for two years in the Twenty-third Maine, 2nd division of the Third army corps, Army of the Potomac. After the war he tired of Maine and went to Nevada, where he worked in a mining camp for six years. When the work failed him there he came to Dakota. He arrived in May, 1882, filed on a homestead in Greenview township, and has lived there ever since.
Benjamin A. Upton was born in September, 1857, in Norway, Maine. He entered into a partnership with Mr. Butler, which lasted until his death, April 2, 1904. During the summer of 1882 and the following winter, Butler and Upton lived in Mardell, where they kept a meat market. For a few years Mr. Upton carried the mail from Tower City to Mardell. The first caucus in the western part of Steele County was held at his home in the fall of 1884. Delegates were then elected to the first county convention held in Steele County.
Butler and Upton had large landed interests in both Griggs and Steele counties. They were also taxpayers of Riverside. At present Mr. Butler has a large herd of registered shorthorns. Cattle from the "Greenview Stock Farm" are now being shipped to various places in North Dakota-
State Historical Society of North Dakota - Vol. 2