Meadsville, April 10, 1850.
Frederick Douglass:
Dear Sir, ー I employ the present occasion to inform you that the Rev. Samuel R. Ward, of Syracuse, has been invited by the members of the Senior Class of the Meadsville Theological School, to preach their Anniversary Discourse on the 27th of June next. I make this statement, that you may, if you please give notice of the fact to the readers of your journal, and oblige.
Your Friend and obedient Servant,
B. J. ButtsButts, Bryan J.

Bryan J. Butts (c. 1825-91) was a student at Meadville Theological School in 1850. He was born in New York and later lived in Syracuse. Following his time at Meadville, he moved to Massachusetts and joined the Hopedale Commune, becoming an ardent advocate for individualism and women’s rights. Butts began publishing two periodicals in the 1860s, The Modern Age and Spiritual Reformer and wrote a number of pamphlets, including Industrial Independence of Women. He was still living in Milford, Massachusetts, until at least 1881. 1850 U. S. Census, Meadville, Crawford, Pennsylvania; Annual Catalogue of the Meadville Theological School for the Academic Year 1849–50 (Meadville, Pa.: Lewis L. Lord, 1849), 7; Edward K. Spann, Hopedale: From Commune to Company Town, 1840–1920 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992), 144–45; Adin Ballou, History of the Town of Milford, Worcester County, Massachusetts (Boston: Rand, Avery, & Co., 1882), 229; Natasha Kirsten Kraus, A New Type of Womanhood: Discursive Politics and Social Change in Antebellum America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 221; “Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Records, 1840–1915,” Ancestry.com. .