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Edgar Ray Butterworth (March 3, 1847 – January 1, 1921) was an American funeral director, believed to have coined the professional terms ''mortuary'' and ''mortician''.〔Clarence B. Bagley, History of King County Washington, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, Chicago-Seattle, 1929, Volume III, pages 781-785.〕 ==A slow migration west== Butterworth was born in 1847 in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts. His paternal grandfather, Noah Butterworth, served in the American Revolution. His father was William Ray Butterworth; his mother's name was Eliza ''née'' Norwood, also from an old New England family. In 1857 his family moved to Wright County, Minnesota, where his father worked as a millwright for six years. This was during the period of the Sioux Wars in that frontier region. When the American Civil War, broke out, Edgar Butterworth tried to enlist but he was too young. In 1863, the family returned to Massachusetts.〔 From the age of 16—that is, roughly from the time of the family's return to Massachusetts—he was the prime breadwinner in his family. He worked for a time as a hatter; then, still in his teens and despite a limited formal education, he began to study law and was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts just after he reached the age of 21. In 1869, he married Grace M. Whipple, a direct descendant of William Whipple, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. She died only two years into the marriage, after bearing a child, Gilbert M. Butterworth.〔 In 1873, Butterworth moved to Saint Louis, Missouri where he again worked as a hatter. Also in that year, he remarried to Maria L. Gillespie. They relocated to Fort Scott, Kansas and in 1876 to the rangelands of southwest Kansas, where he became a cattleman. He also hauled the bones of dead bison to the nearest railroad where he received US$10 per ton (907 kg).〔 There, on the plains of Kansas, he also had his first occasion to make a coffin. Traveling with his team and wagon, he encountered a settler in front of a "dugout" home, grieving for his wife and newborn child, both of whom had just died. With no lumber available on the grasslands, Butterworth fashioned a coffin from his own wagon box.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Edgar Ray Butterworth」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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