Miriam Wade Butts

Miriam Wade Butts, 97, passed away on August 26, 2023 at Legacy Memory Care at OceanView, Falmouth, ME, from the effects of dementia. She was known by family and friends as “Mim.” She was born on July 14, 1926, as the fifth of six children of Harold H. and Meta (Bennett) Wade, in Worcester, MA, where her father was Headmaster of Worcester Academy.

She graduated from Bancroft School in Worcester in 1944 before attending Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, where she met Charles A. Butts, Jr. They graduated together as classmates in 1948. They were married in September 1949 at the Wade family’s summer home on Bustins Island, in Casco Bay, Freeport, ME.

They lived in Lexington, MA, for 61 years, where they raised their family of four children, before moving to OceanView Retirement Community, Falmouth, Maine, in 2014.

She was associated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for over 40 years as both a member of the staff and as an Adjunct Lecturer. She presented gallery talks and off-site slide-illustrated lectures for the MFA. She also presented illustrated lectures on fine art, early American history and architecture for schools, historical societies, and other organizations throughout the Greater Boston area. She developed and conducted regular day trips and week-long tours for MFA members to museums and other sites throughout New England and in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, focusing on New England's collections and architectural heritages, and to regions such as the Hudson River Valley and Campobello, N. B.

She was the co-author of The American China Trade: Foreign Devils to Canton 1783 – 1843 (1974) and The Early Industrialization of America: From Wharf to Waterfall (1976) both published by Viking Press, New York. In 2010 she was elected a Resident Member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Resident Members, limited to 200 in number, are elected for their “distinguished contributions, written or otherwise, to colonial American history.”

She was one of five founding partners of the Gallery on the Green, an art gallery in Lexington that showed and sold original works of art. It introduced the works of many new artists during its 15 years of existence. In 1975 she was a member of the Town of Lexington’s committee formed to celebrate the United States’ bicentennial year.

She and her husband, along with others, were Founding Trustees of the Partnership of the Historic Bostons, formed in 1999 to foster public understanding and contributions of the 17th-century founders of Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony and to preserve its historical links with Boston, Lincolnshire, England.

She and her husband organized and led individualized, sharp-focus tours for small groups that included ten-day to two-week travels throughout the British Isles and Northern Italy, and three-to four-day tours to historic and scenic parts of New England and New York including regions such as the Hudson River Valley and Campobello, N.B. They conducted over 25 such trips between 1983 and 2012.

She is survived by Charles her loving husband and best friend of 74 years; her two daughters, Joanna and her husband, Edward Day, of Bristol, RI and Laura and her husband, Sean Clarke, of Apple Valley, MN; her two sons, Joel and his wife, Sue, of Branson, MO and Charles Ralph and his wife, Chrystine, of Methuen, MA; three grandchildren, Whitney and her husband, Christian Batchelor, of Christianburg, VA, Taylor Butts and his wife, Maggie, of Marshfield, MO, and Hillary Harmon and her husband, Andrew, of Hudson, MA; three great grandchildren, Cade, Aspen and Lyra Batchelor; her sister-in-law, Louise Butts, of Cromwell, CT; and many, nieces and nephews.

She was predeceased by her parents; her sisters Virginia Sampson of Lexington, MA and Fort Collins, CO, and her husband John Sampson; and Anne Wade of Boston, MA; and her brothers Alan Wade of Lexington, MA, and his wife Helen, Harold Wade, Jr of Contoocook, NH and his wife Caroline, and Paul Wade of Brunswick, ME; and her brother-in-law Kenneth Butts of Fremont, CA.