Roger Place BUTTERFIELD

SCHNUG, BUTTERFIELD

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 6/29/2013 at 11:08:20

July 29, 1907 -- January 31, 1981

ROGER BUTTERFIELD IS DEAD AT 73; AUTHOR, JOURNALIST AND HISTORIAN
By WOLFGANG SAXON

Roger Place Butterfield, a historian and journalist, died yesterday of a heart attack at his home in Hartwick, N.Y. He was 73 years old.

Mr. Butterfield, a former national affairs editor for Life magazine, was the author of ''The American Past: History of the United States from Concord to Hiroshima, 1775-1945.'' The book presented 1,000 drawings, political cartoons, pictures and photographs with connecting text by Mr. Butterfield.

Ten years ago, Mr. Butterfield moved to the quiet of upstate New York for health reasons. But he and his wife, the former Margaret Schnug, founded a successful antiquarian book business they ran out of their home.

The home itself was a relic of American history. One of the oldest in the Cooperstown area, it once was also a tavern owned by Maj. James Butterfield, a Revolutionary War veteran and Roger Butterfield's great-great-grandfather. Work Was Hailed

While the Butterfields were selling out-of-print books, his own leading work, ''The American Past,'' suffered no such fate. Having been expanded twice since it originally appeared in 1947, the book has remained on the current lists. On its appearance, a review by Orville Prescott in The New York Times called it ''a leviathan of a picture book,'' written ''with colloquial snap and unfailing euphoria.''

Previously, in 1944, Mr. Butterfield had published ''Al Schmid, Marine,'' the story of combat hero who was blinded in in the Salomons and then fought another battle back to sanity. It was later turned into the film ''Pride of the Marines.''

Mr. Butterfield was born July 29, 1907, in Lyndonville, N.Y. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1927. After one semester at Columbia University's School of Journalism, he took a job as reporter and rewrite man at The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and later on The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger.

In 1937, Time hired him as Philadelphia correspondent and, months later, as editor of the weekly's press section in New York. He subsequently became a roving reporter for Time publications. He became Life's national affairs editor in 1941.

Besides his wife, Mr. Butterfield is survived by a brother, Lyman H.

February 1, 1981
New York Times

[wife Margaret Schnug - formerly of Dows, Wright County, Iowa]