Martin Butler

1857-1915

Martin Butler was born on 1 September 1857 in Norton, Kings County, New Brunswick. Butler’s first education was received at home from his mother. When Butler was older, the family moved to York County, where he briefly attended school in exchange for the job of keeping up the fire in the schoolroom. He was briefly apprenticed to Kingsclear Baptist merchant and amateur poet and printer, George Hammond. In 1870 or 1871 Butler’s family moved over the border to Grand Lake Stream, west of St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Butler again briefly attended school, including a boarding high school, but primarily worked alongside his father and one brother in the Grand Lake Stream and other nearby tanneries. It was in Maine that he began writing correspondence for newspapers such as the Fredericton Gleaner and the Calais Times. An accident at the Grand Lake Stream tannery in December 1876, took his right arm and he returned to New Brunswick after recovering from the amputation. He began cobbling together a livelihood: of summers doing peddling, newsboy and related occupations in New Brunswick, and winters doing occasional barkmill work in the rural tanneries of Maine. Butler was the author of two collections of poetry—Maple Leaves and Hemlock Branches (1889) and Patriotic and Personal Poems (1898).  He edited and sometimes also printed and published his general interest, literary, and political newspaper, Butler’s Journal (1890–1915). He also edited and published the Canadian Democrat (1899–1902). Butler died in Fredericton on 24 August 1915.

 

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Fredericton

Archival Material