Manuscripts Collection
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, located in Theodore Wirth Park (first known as Saratoga Park (1889-1890) and later as Glenwood Park (1890-1938)) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was founded in 1907. Known at that time as the Minneapolis Wild Botanic Garden, the preserve was the culmination of the efforts of four high school botany teachers who, concerned with the impact of the growing city on nature, wished to create a resource through which they could give their students the opportunity to make first hand observations of the native flora of the region. Foremost among these instructors was Eloise Butler, a teacher in the Minneapolis schools since 1874. In 1911 Butler became the garden's first curator with a salary of $50.00 per month, paid jointly by the Minneapolis Park Board and the Minneapolis Woman's Club.
The first of its kind in the country, Butler's garden project was different because it was wild. Rather than creating traditional flower beds, carefully cultivating and pruning, Butler intended to interfere as little as possible with the plants. She tried to provide for them an environment as close as possible to that from which each came. In addition the garden was to host only the native flora of Minnesota. The unique garden soon became the object of many school field trips, girl and boy scout outings, and the like. In 1949 the garden's annual report recorded 43,000 visitors. By 1966 that number had increased to 150,000, including 71 elementary school classes and 24 high school, adult, and non-academic children's groups.
During her lifetime, the garden was Butler's project and her personal mission. As curator, Butler personally conducted visitors through the grounds and was said to keep some of her most prized additions to the garden in a hidden section which she showed only to favored visitors. In 1929 the garden was renamed the Eloise Butler Wild Flower Garden in her honor. After Butler's death in 1933 while at work in the garden, the curatorship was taken over by her friend and assistant, Martha Crone. Under Crone's care the garden continued to thrive and many new threatened species were added. Due to the generosity of one of the garden's most devoted benefactors, Clinton Odell, the fenced area was expanded and the curator's salary increased. Odell, a former botany student of Butler's and the creator of the famous Burma Shave signs, was also the founder of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc., in 1952. Crone's successor, Kenneth Avery, introduced a number of new management practices including controlled prairie burns and the keeping of detailed phenology records noting the first and last bloom dates for each plant species. Following Crone's retirement in 1959, the Park Board dropped the position of curator, replacing it with the position of head gardener in an effort to bring the Butler garden into line with other city parks and gardens. Avery served in this position from 1959 until 1987, when Cary George took over. Other notable changes in the garden have included the erection of the Martha E. Crone Shelter to serve as an office and visitor center (1969) and, in 1984, the addition of a naturalist program. That the relatively secluded location of the garden and its wildness made it a haven for many varieties of birds was recognized since the garden's early years. In recognition of this fact, the garden was renamed the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary in 1969.
Eloise Butler was born on August 3, 1851 on a farm in the town of Appleton, Maine. Her interest in things botanical began as a child when she and her sister Cora were taught to identify plants by an aunt. After completing high school in Lynn, Massachusetts and attending the Eastern State Normal School in Castine, Maine, Butler began what was to be a 38-year career as a teacher, primarily of high school botany. In 1874 Butler moved to Minneapolis, to teach at Center School. In the years until her retirement from teaching in 1911, Butler also taught at that city's Central and South high schools. During her years as a teacher she continued to pursue her own studies in science, taking courses at the University of Minnesota. Her early research concentrated on desmids, a kind of freshwater algae. In 1882 she identified three new species, two of which were eventually named after her.
With the emphasis on scientific observation that is evident in her personal
studies, it is not surprising that Butler felt keenly the lack of resources
available to her botany students. What began as an effort to provide a needed
teaching tool for students soon grew into a second career for Butler. Four years
after the founding of the Minneapolis Wild Botanic Garden in 1907, Butler was
appointed curator by Theodore Wirth, who was then superintendent of parks in
Minneapolis. Her duties and accomplishments included a topographical survey of
the grounds and a detailed catalog of the flora then growing in the preserve,
the expansion of the garden to include diverse environments such as a bog and a
pond, the collection and transplanting of hundreds of plants native to
Minnesota, many of which were threatened, as well as conducting visitors through
the gardens. In addition to her activities as curator Butler wrote a regular
column for the
On April 10, 1933, Butler died of a heart attack while at work in the garden. According to her wishes, her ashes were scattered in the garden.
Martha Crone was born in 1894 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While her formal schooling ended in the eighth grade, she continued to cultivate an interest in botany and horticulture throughout her life, particularly after meeting Eloise Butler in 1921. Avid members of the Minnesota Mycological Society, Crone and her husband William shared with Butler an interest in mushrooms and often used their mushroom-hunting excursions as opportunities to collect plants for the garden. Crone became Butler's first assistant and took over the curatorship of the Wild Botanic Garden in 1933 after Butler's death.
Among Crone's many achievements in the garden were the addition of wild ferns and orchids and the transplanting of a rare wild poinsettia shortly before the last patch was destroyed near New Ulm, Minnesota in the late 1940s. While Butler's contributions to her field went largely unrecognized by her peers, Crone succeeded in bringing the garden into the spotlight. In 1951 Crone was recognized by fellow plant experts as one of the finest botanists in the country. In 1956 she was awarded a bronze medal for achievement in horticulture from the Minnesota State Horticultural Society.
In 1952, with the founding of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc., Crone
added to her duties the jobs of secretary and editor of the Friends' newsletter,
The Friends of the Wild Flower Garden was founded in 1952 by Martha Crone and
Clinton Odell as a nonprofit corporation for the purpose of development,
preservation, and support of the Eloise Butler Wild Flower Garden. Over the
years the group has provided volunteers to work in the garden and financial
support for a variety of projects including maintenance, a plant inventory, the
purchase of plant materials, signage, publicity, educational and research
grants, and the building of the Martha E. Crone Shelter. The group has published
its quarterly newsletter,
Biographical and historical data were taken from the collection and from Martha
E. Hellander's biography,
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary Records are a somewhat unconventional collection, as they include what could be considered four separate collections from four different creators: Eloise Butler, Martha E. Crone, the garden itself, and the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc.
While many of the materials created by Butler and Crone, including diaries, correspondence, and notes, are technically personal papers, the informal nature of the garden administration meant that much of this material also served as official organizational records. For example, Butler and Crone, as the first two curators of the garden, received all correspondence regarding the garden at their homes, rather than at the garden, which did not even have a telephone until 1957. Its content is often a mixture of personal news and anecdotes along with information concerning new plants or seeds for the garden, as well as financial and administrative matters. The extremely small number of paid staff assigned to the garden meant that the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc., with their many volunteers and active financial support, became a major administrative arm of the garden. It is in their records that the bulk of the information concerning garden development, finances, and publicity after 1952 can be found.
These records are organized into the following four sections:
The newsletter of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc.,
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the
Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics,
persons or places should
Accession numbers: 5455; 14,733; 15,199; 15,319; 16,172; 16,317; 16,422
Processed by: Lara D. Friedman-Shedlov, April 1996; updated August 1998; Alex Kent, January 2010
Catalog ID number: 001733058
The Eloise Butler papers include materials created by Butler, as well as additional materials gathered by Hellander about Butler. Among materials created by Butler herself may be found miscellaneous notes and correspondence, articles and other writings, as well as copies of scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings by and about Butler and the garden. There is also a diary kept intermittently by Butler from 1902 to 1917 in which she recorded her thoughts on the garden and her observations of plants, birds, and other wildlife. In addition to these items, Hellander collected other materials providing genealogical and biographical data about Butler and her family, including a file on Cora Pease, Butler's sister and partner in botanizing. Items of particular interest in these files include a lengthy letter from Butler's brother Simpson to their sister Cora outlining the family history on their mother's side, as well as a typescript copy of a journal kept by a cousin of the Butlers' during a visit to them. There are also copies of articles that Cora wrote, many of which mention Eloise. Most notable in the series are two taped interviews (one with a transcript) Hellander conducted with acquaintances of Butler: Lloyd Teeuwen, who worked for Butler in the garden during the 1920s and 1930s, and Jean Babcock Rorbaugh, the granddaughter of the family with whom Butler lived while residing in Minneapolis. In these interviews the subjects describe their experiences with and impressions of Butler during her later years.
Includes Wolle,
Includes correspondence, articles, an inventory of Butler's estate upon her death, and the journal of Winnifred Furness (1869-1870).
Includes 1 cassette tape and transcript of interview with Lloyd Teeuwenand and 2 cassette tapes of interview with Jean Babcock Rorbaugh.
The personal papers of Martha Crone contain diaries, notes, newspaper
clippings, and travelogues. The diaries, which date from 1929 to 1933 and
from 1939 to 1943, record daily chores, family events and outings, as well
as activities in the garden. Two files contain miscellaneous notes, many of
which appear to be drafts of articles and poems for the
Includes miscellaneous ready reference facts, memoranda, diary entries, andmany notes on family relationships into the 1960s.
Second volume includes notes and memoranda dating through 1986.
May be notes for articles for publication in newspapers or
Includes membership rosters, minutes, summary history, and newsletters.
Garden records include guidebooks, maps, annual reports, orders and other administrative and financial records, logs, histories, newspaper clippings, correspondence, and photographs. They also include blueprints for the front and back gates of the garden, curator annual reports, and a biography of Clinton Odell, the founder of the Friends of the Garden, Inc. The guidebooks are particularly helpful as an orientation to the garden and its history as they contain brief biographies of the garden's major figures, information about Theodore Wirth Park in general, and descriptions of many of the flora and fauna to be seen in the sanctuary. The series of newspaper clippings gives a picture of how the garden and its curators were perceived by the public over the years. The garden logs, started by Butler in 1907 and continued by Crone after Butler's death, provide a day-to-day chronicle of the garden's progress, describing new species discovered or planted, dates of blooming, maintenance performed, weather conditions, and other events.
The major part of the series consists of interfiled personal and garden-related correspondence and miscellaneous papers to and from Eloise Butler and Martha Crone. The bulk of this correspondence concerns the procurement of various seeds and plants, as well as contributions from various benefactors, improvements to the facilities, and thank-you notes from visiting individuals and groups. Of particular interest is the transcript of a 1943 WCCO radio interview with Martha Crone in which she describes the garden and its mission.
The garden records also include photographs of the garden and its directors. In addition to a folder of 48 prints which includes portraits of Butler and Crone, as well as many views of the garden, a series of approximately 2200 slides taken by Crone during the 1940s and 1950s provide a detailed record of the wild flora growing in the garden and around the state during that period. The slides also include alphabetically filed photographs of individual flowers in the garden and elsewhere around the state, as well chronologically filed scenic views of the garden in every season over the course of a ten year period.
Includes "Early History of Eloise Butler Plant Reserve, 1907-1926" and "Annals of the Wild Life Reserve, Theodore Wirth Park, Minneapolis, 1914-1931," two items previously cataloged separately.
Correspondence between Butler and Rosendahl, chair of the botany department at the University of Minnesota (1922, 1925, 1930-1931), documents Butler's unsuccessful efforts to bring the garden under the auspices of the university.
Correspondence with Theodore Wirth, superintendent of parks (1933-1941), is notable for its illustration of relations between the park board and the garden, touching on issues such as the appointment of Crone as successor to Butler, financial responsibility for improvements and maintenance, proposed developments to the garden and to the park, and the status of the garden as a bird sanctuary.
Correspondence with Odell, founder and president of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc., documents expansion and improvements to the garden funded by Odell and the founding of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden in 1952.
Includes articles by Eloise Butler and materials related to the dedication of the Martha Crone Shelter.
Slides were taken by Martha Crone.
Also includes miscellaneous slides (many later reproductions from earlier photographs) of Butler, her family, and the Butler farm.
Friends of the Wild Flower Garden records include minutes, reports, membership rosters, correspondence, proposals, and grant proposals. The minutes, which include annual and monthly board meetings, are an excellent source of information about major developments in the garden from the early 1950s onward. Another file of particular interest is that on the Martha E. Crone Shelter, which provides a comprehensive picture of the project from start to finish, including the impetus, design, fund raising, contracting, and dedication.
Includes volunteer and nominating committee, editor's and historian's reports.
A daily log of the president's activities.
Appear to be studies for the newsletter logo.
Odell was founder of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, Inc.