Birth2 Mar 1851, Saint Simon’s Island, Glynn County, Georgia, USA ®1891
Death20 Oct 1913, Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, USA ®1891
Burial1913, Richmond County, Georgia, USA ®1891
MemoCottage Cemetery
Misc. Notes
BUTLER KING COUPER: He was born on the "Retreat" Plantation, St. Simon's Island, Georgia on 2 March 1851; he died in Spartanburg, South Carolina on 20 October 1913. Butler King Couper was the grandson of Thomas Butler King, a Georgia congressman and master of the famous "Retreat" plantation at the south end of St. Simons's Island, Georgia, and great-grandson of John Couper, master of the equally famous "Cannon's Point" plantation at the north end of St. Simon's. Butler King Couper's family had textile interests in north Georgia as well as their Sea-Island cotton plantations on the islands and Georgia coastal plain, so he naturally became a cotton factor. His first wife was Meta Habersham of the legendary Savannah family, who died young with the birth of their child, Butler King Couper, Jr. King's parents had moved to their home "Waverly" in Marietta, Georgia, to be near their textile interests and he moved there to start a new life after the loss of his wife and child. His best friend and hunting/riding companion was John Adams Sibley, son of Josiah Sibley and Emma Eve Longstreet of Augusta, who, with her sister Hannah had inherited Oswell Eve's "Cottage" from Sarah Eve Adams. Josiah Sibley's 1840s summer home "Cottage Hill " was between Marietta and Kennesaw Mountain, and was one of the few houses to survive the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and the Siege of Atlanta. Gen. William T. Sherman reputedly assigned a detachment of soldiers to protect it to prevent a diplomatic incident with England -- a British guest sitting out the war at the summer home had displayed the Union Jack as if the place were his own when the Federal forces swept toward it.
It was here that John Sibley and King Couper galloped up in the midst of a summer garden party and met John's younger sister, Emma Josephine Sibley, namesake of her aunt, Emmeline (Emma) Eve Smith, Oswell Eve's youngest surviving daughter. King and Jo instantly fell in love. At the time she was studying at the Arts League in New York, necessitating a long distance courtship. The next year, 1890, she repeated the "Grand Tour" of Europe that she had first made with her parents and siblings in 1879. As Jo's ship approached New York harbor, the pilot climbed on deck followed by King who had bribed the official with a case of champagne to allow him to ride out on the pilot boat and welcome her home before they docked -- with a ring. They were married shortly thereafter and settled first in Marietta, Georgia, then moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where King had opened a new office.
There, a son, the second Butler King Couper, Jr., was born in 1906. In 1913, in the midst of a world-wide cotton market collapse, the distressed father sat up all night to comfort his ill six-year-old son, suffered a massive heart attack, and was found dead holding his son's hand. He was interred in Cottage Cemetery near Joseph Eve, the inventor of the cotton gin.
Spouses
BirthSavannah, Chatham County, Georgia, USA
Misc. Notes
She was from a famous Savannah, Georgia family and was the first first wife of Butler. She died young with the birth of their child, Butler King Couper, Jr.
Family ID1992
Marriage1891
Birth23 Feb 1867, Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia, USA ®1891, ®3779
Death25 Oct 1957, Greenville, Greenville County, South Carolina, USA ®3780, ®3781
Burialaft 25 Oct 1957, Richmond County, Georgia, USA ®1891
MemoCottage Cemetery
Misc. Notes
She was Butler's second wife and a resident of Tryon, North Carolina.
JOSEPHINE SIBLEY COUPER: Born, Augusta, Georgia on 23 February 1867; Died in Greenville, South Carolina on 25 October 1957. Josephine Sibley was born just after the Civil War, the fifteenth and last child of Josiah Sibley, and the fourth by his second wife, Emma Eve Longstreet. Jo was christened "Emma Josephine" as a namesake of her great-aunt Emmeline (Emma) Eve Smith the Eve family historian. Jo's mother had inherited "The Cottage" and the lands surrounding the Cottage Cemetery, which were maintained as a place of refuge and pleasure for all Eve family descendants. Early in life she exhibited interest in art, and by age twelve, when the family took a six-month "Grand Tour" of Europe, she kept the family's journal of what they were seeing, but most of her record ended up being of art, artists and color. Until then she had been a tom-boy, more interested in riding horses and beating any boy in the neighborhood at tree climbing, a feat at which she excelled, until she discovered art. When the family reached Paris the Refuses exhibit was just ending and the city was full of talk about the New Art -- the French Impressionists -- with whom she fell in love. She wanted to attend the Arts League in New York but her father refused to allow that; instead he built for her a studio on the grounds of the Augusta house and hired a friend of John Singer Sargent to come to Augusta and instruct her. When Josiah died in 1888, she instantly left for New York and the Arts League; then, in 1890, she retraced the 1879 "Grand Tour" revisiting all of the galleries and collections with a fresh eye, particularly Rubens, Titian and Raphael -- to whom she added Corregio and Rembrandt -- and always, The Impressionists. Jo was a "color artist" and consumed with the effects of light on the subject matter captured on canvas. She married Butler King Couper in 1891, moved to Marietta, Georgia, where she established her first studio; then to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she and cousin Margaret Law had studios and established an arts society and museum (bringing in Robert Henri for the occasion, and acquiring from him the famous "The Girl With The Red Hair" considered by some as America's "first Impressionist painting"). She painted with William Merritt Chase at Olde Lyme, Connecticut, and enlarged her circle to include Elliott Daingerfield, Henri and the Ash Can School, Hugh Breckenridge, and the Gloucester art colony of which she was an essential part. After her son King was at MIT and daughter Constance in China, she returned to Paris to paint with the color master Andre L'hote. She took awards at the Salon in 1930 and in 1931 her painting of her Montreat, North Carolina home was the cover of Literary Digest, the first instance of color reproduction in publication. In the mid-1930s she had five one-woman shows in New York, then retired back to North Carolina to paint. Jo Sibley Couper's works are known to be in the collections of the High Museum, Atlanta; the Brooklyn (New York), Gloucester (Massachusetts), Spartanburg (South Carolina), Macon (Georgia), and Morris (Augusta, Georgia) museums; and in the collections of the University of Tennessee and Scripps, La Jolla, California. She fell while painting in her Tryon, North Carolina studio in 1957 and passed away two days later. She was interred next to her husband in the Cottage Cemetery.
Josephine Sibley Couper 1867-1957: Is daughter of Emma Eve Longstreet and Josiah Sibley. Jo, as she preferred to be called, became a widely acclaimed Southern Artist. Her work, although known internationally, is part of the collection at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA, where she is buried, at Cottage Cemetery.
Family ID1586
Marriage1901