Courtesy photo Hillsborough County Superior Court South Deputy Clerk Amy M. Feliciano has been named court clerk, succeeding longtime Clerk Marshall Buttrick, who retired effective May 31.

NASHUA – For years, court employees, officers, attorneys and even a defendant here and there have wondered: Which came first, the Hillsborough County Superior Court South building on Spring Street, or its venerable chief clerk of court, Marshall Buttrick?

The official ruling is it was a tie. Buttrick, 66, who stepped down last week after 41 years as a Superior Court clerk, almost 30 of them in Nashua, arrived before the courthouse’s furniture was even set up, and ever since has kept order behind the counter and in each of the courtrooms.

Buttrick, a lifelong Greenville resident whose family roots go back to the Revolutionary War, handed his court duties over to Attorney Amy Feliciano, his deputy clerk for the past five years.

Feliciano, a former Strafford County prosecutor, came to Nashua in May 2015 to succeed former Hillsborough County South deputy clerk Michael Scanlon, who was named chief clerk at Hillsborough County Superior Court North in Manchester.

State Superior Court Chief Justice Tina Nadeau said she was “thrilled to hire Amy Feliciano as the next clerk of court” for the Southern district.

Courtesy photo Veteran Hillsborough County Superior Court South Clerk Marshall Buttrick retired May 31 and will be succeeded by Deputy Clerk Amy Feliciano.

“During her time as deputy, she has helped run the court with professionalism and approachability,” Nadeau said.

Feliciano is also valued for her role in “regularly assisting the drug court team … as an effective team member (who) has offered wise input,” Nadeau added.

Feliciano, who in addition to her 9 years as a Strafford County assistant county attorney served 6 years as a victim witness advocate for Suffolk County District Attorneyís Office in Boston, assumed her clerk of court duties June 1.

As for Buttrick, his four-decade career in charge of the day to day workings of Superior Courts began in 1979, when he was named deputy clerk in Manchester, which was the county’s lone Superior Court at the time.

He assumed the clerk of court post at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord in 1984, then submitted his application for the Nashua position as the new building was nearing completion.

The most sweeping change Buttrick encountered in his 41 years was the conversion from paper files to electronic versions, which, he said, a process everyone learned together.

“When I was in Manchester, it was all paper,” Buttrick said, referring to typewritten, or sometimes hand-written, documents that clerks and assistants filed into manila folders.

Computers began showing up on desks by the time he took the job in Concord, Buttrick said. When he came to Nashua, the tech-revolution was in high gear.

“Eventually we had a reduction in staff … it was so much faster, and time-saving,” he said of the rapidly-advancing technology.

Among the other changes he’s seen over his career is perhaps the most tragic of all: the rise in drug-related cases.

“When I first started drug cases were actually pretty rare,” Buttrick said. “Now, unfortunately, we see so many.”

Among those chiming in on the first changing of the guard at Nashua’s Superior Court was Christopher Keating, executive director of the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“This afternoon, shy of the summer solstice, Marshall Buttrick, the current clerk of the Hillsborough County Superior Court-South, will be, to our great sadness, the former clerk of the Hillsborough County Superior Court-South,” Keating wrote in a brief, rather whimsical essay on Buttrick’s last day in office.

“Maybe as soon as this afternoon,” Keating wrote, referring to Buttrick’s “other career” farming his many acres of land in Greenville, “he will swing into the seat of an International Harvester Farmall tractor, and head out onto a familiar swath of grass in Greenville, where he will begin his slow, methodical mowing around the outer limits of an ancestral field … .”

Nadeau, meanwhile, also praised Feliciano for “stepping up as acting clerk” when Buttrick “was needed elsewhere in the state to assist with the operation of other courts.

“Throughout her time as deputy she has gained my complete confidence, and because of her capabilities, I can rest easy now that one of the best clerks in the state is retiring,” Nadeau said.

“I know that the members of the bar respect Attorney Feliciano and are as excited as I am that she will be the new clerk.”

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Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.