William Butters II Farm

The William Butter’s Farmhouse is saltbox half house built by William Butter II (later known as Butters) in 1682. His father, William Butter, was one of Wilmington’s earliest settlers. William Butters II is believed to have been his only child, born in 1666, and the first white child born in what is now the town of Wilmington. The Butters Farm is believed to be the second oldest house in Wilmington, built sometime between 1682 and 1690, and it is the oldest unchanged dwelling in town. This home and farm is also significant as the site of the discovery of the Baldwin apple, (known at the time of its “discovery” as the Pecker or Butters apple), in the late eighteenth century, which is memorialized with a statue on the adjacent lot.

Important facts about Butters Farm

• Butters Farmhouse was built circa 1682 and has been continuously lived in since that time (over 320 years)!
• Butters Farm was the site of the discovery of the Baldwin Apple, known at the time as the Pecker or Butters Apple, and memorialized on an adjacent lot with the world’s only monument to an apple.
• Butters Farm was home to James Butters, grandson to William Butter II, who served as one of Wilmington’s Minutemen during the Revolutionary War and participated in the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
• James Butters also gained notoriety in Ripley’s Believe It or Not by trading his oxen for his second wife.
• Butters Farm is part of Burlington/North Woburn/Wilmington Local Industrial Heritage Trail.
• Butters Farm was home to Theodore Butters who lost his life at Gettysburg during the Civil War.