In the 1830s, Oliver Morris Butler built a paper mill on the Fox River in Illinois.

[9] In 1922, Paul and his father Frank Osgood Butler registered the Oak Brook Polo Club with the United States Polo Association (USPA), making the club the fourth oldest in the United States.

When the Meadowbrook Club was taken over by golfers some time after World War II, the Governors of the USPA came to Oak Brook to meet with Paul Butler to ask him to host the U.S. Open at Oak Brook, which by then had 14 polo fields.

During that time the polo and the entire Oak Brook Sports Corp, as the Butler's Oak Brook land holdings were known, were managed either by Paul Butler's son Michael or his daughter Jorie.

[12] He was married three times, to Sarah Anne Josephine Rooney,[13] Marjorie Stresenreuter (later Mrs William Dunaway) and Jean Buckley.

Butler was killed on June 24, 1981, one day after his 89th birthday, when he was struck by a car in front of his home in Oak Brook.

[16] Butler had walked out in front of his home at 1000 Oak Brook Road, at dusk, possibly to take photographs, when he was hit by a driver.