http://www.iaw.on.ca/~awoolley/brang/brang.html
John Butler was born in New London, Connecticut, in 1728, the son of Lieutenant Walter Butler and Deborah Dennis. His father was an officer in the British Army who had come to North America to participate in the expedition against Quebec in 1711. At the end of the campaign, his father was placed on Half-Pay, and settled in New London. His mother's ancestors had been in Connecticut for at least three generations.
In 1728, shortly after John Butler's birth, Walter Butler was posted to Fort Hunter (now Fonda, NY) on the Mohawk River. In the next few years he acquired land across the river from the fort and moved his family from New London. John, his youngest son, was then fourteen years of age.
These were the years of the French and Indian Wars, and John followed his older brothers into the British Indian Department of Sir William Johnson. He was in action at Ticonderoga, Lake George, and the captures of Fort Frontenac, Niagara and Montreal. In 1752 he married Catherine Brandt of a prominent Dutch family on the Mohawk. They raised a family of five children (two others had died in infancy).
During the peace following the conquest of Canada, John Butler took up the management of his estate, some 26,600 acres, of which 3,400 acres had been inherited from his father. The balance he had accumulated by purchase or grant. He valued his holdings at over £13,000. After Sir William Johnson, he was reputed to be the second most wealthy individual in the Mohawk Valley.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, he moved to Montreal with the Indian Department and was dispatched to Niagara in November of 1775 to manage the department there. His eldest son, Walter, accompanied him, but his wife and the remaining children were held prisoners by the rebels.
John Butler led a strong detachment of Indians from Niagara at the Battle of Oriskany in August of 1777. His success during the battle led to the authorization to raise a Corps of Rangers to serve with the Indians on the frontiers. The Corps informally came to be known as Butler's Rangers.
At the end of the Revolution, Butler once again turned to farming, and became the "de facto" leader of the settlement in the Niagara Peninsula. He served as Deputy Superintendent of the Indian Department at Niagara, a Justice of the Peace, a member of the Land Board of Niagara, Lieutenant of the County of Lincoln, Commanding Officer of the Nassau and Lincoln militia, leader of the Church of England in the community, and a prominent member of the Masonic Order.
Butler died at Niagara on 12 May 1796, after a long illness. His wife had died three years earlier and they left a family of one daughter and three sons.
During the Revolution the ten companies were commanded by:
Lieutenant Colonel John Butler
Captain Andrew Bradt, Walter Butler, William Caldwell, George Dame, Bernard Frey, Lewis Geneway, Peter Hare, John McDonell, John McKinnon, Benjamin Pawling, Peter Ten Broeck & Andrew Thompson.