Eileen Butts
(1897-1991)

Died aged c. 94

Eileen Butts was born in 1897 in Detroit, Michigan. She and her husband moved to Ormond Beach in 1936 and purchased the Lindsay Estate. Mrs. Butts collected botanical specimens. There are more than 3,000 specimens of Florida wildflowers currently listed in her name in the Gray (Oaks Ames) Herbarium at Harvard University. In Ormond Beach, she helped create Tomoka State Park, erect the Fred Dana Marsh Fountain in the park, preserve the Bulow Ruins (Bulow State Park) and construct the Ormond Memorial Art Gallery. In the 1970s, when John D. Rockefeller’s home, The Casements, faced demolition, Butts helped raise money to restore it. She was a member of the Halifax Historical Society, Civic Music Association, Daytona Beach Symphony, Bethune-Cookman College Advisory Board and chairman of the Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials. In 1973 the Florida Senate and House recognized her for lifetime service to Ormond Beach and to the State of Florida. Eileen Butts died in 1991.

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