LETTER: Typed letter signed to Miss Mary F. Buttre and Mrs. Emma Buttre Winans.
Anthony on the death of John Chester Buttre,
History of Woman Suffrage Engraver
Anthony, Susan B. Typed letter signed, “Susan B. Anthony,” to Mary F. Buttre & Emma Buttre Winans, December 14, 1893, Rochester, New York; 2 leaves of New York State Constitutional Convention – Woman Suffrage Amendment Campaign Committee letterhead, recto only; four holograph corrections.
A letter of condolence to the daughters of John Chester Buttre, the steel-plate engraver who produced the plate illustrations for the seminal three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, of which Anthony was an editor. Anthony writes that she’s received the women’s letter announcing their father’s death, and commiserates by offering her own experience:
I well remember, when my father passed to the beyond at the age of 69, how I felt the world ought to stop, as if all worth living for were gone! But soon I saw that the best way to reverence my father’s memory was to do more and better work than ever before...for after all, those of us who remain must live and do for those who are still on this side. (p. 1)
She writes that their father was “perfectly honorable” in his business relations with her, and regarding the History of Woman Suffrage, she informs them,
All the steel-plates [for the illustrations] were in your father’s office. I hope before many years to be able to get out a second edition of that work, and when that day comes, I shall ask you to print the needed copies for the new edition. (p. 1-2)
In a tribute to John Chester Buttre following his death, The National Magazine wrote, “It is not exaggeration to say that Mr. Buttre was at the very head of his profession, and was the most widely known of the publishing engravers and plate-printers of America,” adding, “It will be pleasing to many to learn that the business, conducted for fifty-five years by Mr. Buttre, will be continued by his daughter Mary F. Buttre under incorporation as the ‘J.C. Buttre Company’....” (Vol. XIX, No. 1, November 1893, pp. 203 ff).
The “second” (i.e. third) edition of History of Woman Suffrage appeared in 1902, with an added fourth volume. The complicated publishing history of the work is discussed by Martha Kelly in an article for the IOBA Standard (“A Little History of The History of Woman Suffrage.” IOBA Standard, Volume VI, Number 1, Spring Edition 2005).
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