Butler, Martin

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: S. David Frank, “BUTLER, MARTIN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. See full biography at: https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/butler_martin_14E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • A self-described “poet, printer, peddler, patriot, workman, editor”; b. 1 Sept. 1857 in Norton, N.B., son of Sarah White and Benjamin Burlock Betts Butler; m. 5 June 1895 Margaret McLean in Fredericton; d. there 24 Aug. 1915.
    • Martin Butler’s early boyhood was spent on the Salmon River in Kent County, N.B., where his father had taken up land in 1859. His memories of “that pleasant forest glade” were mixed, and in one account he described himself as “born in a wretched hovel, cradled in penury, denied all the joys and amusements of childhood.” His father was a rural labourer of loyalist and Irish origins, who made a hard living cutting wood and working farms.
    • Although he had had little formal schooling, as a youth Butler had spent a good part of his wages on reading material and memorized much of Longfellow. He began as early as 1873 to contribute correspondence and poetry to local newspapers. His writings detail the bleak social landscape of the rural industrial environment, where “the withered and broken hearts of the largest portion of humanity” were mocked by the “mystic grandeur” of the surrounding forest. In 1889 Butler published in Fredericton, where he had settled that year, his first collection of verse, Maple leaves and hemlock branches . . . , a volume that portrays people and scenes of the New Brunswick and Maine borderlands. 
    • Butler’s principal achievement was the publication for 25 years of an independent monthly newspaper. Established in Fredericton in 1890, Butler’s Journal was to advertise itself as “devoted to national independence, literature, current notes and social gossip,” a description later modified to “home literature and social reform.” He found his patronage “almost wholly among the honest, large hearted working men and farmers” of Fredericton and the surrounding countryside, and by 1894 he claimed more than 900 subscribers. 
    • In a life broken by personal tragedy, Butler achieved a local reputation in the 1870s and 1880s as a voice of the rural labouring classes in the Maine–New Brunswick borderlands, one of the neglected chroniclers who contributed commentary and entertainment to the vigorous local cultures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Established as a publisher in Fredericton in 1890, he single-handedly maintained an independent literary and political publication for 25 years. In Butler’s Journal he mixed “choice home-crafted fare” with advanced democratic, nationalist, and socialist views that contradict the stereotypes of backwoods conservatism and imperial loyalty in the Maritimes. Butler’s populist philosophy and socialist politics emerged from personal experience and intellectual conviction, educating his readers to the social issues of the day and establishing his reputation as one of the “prophets of radicalism” in New Brunswick.
  • Great Grandson of proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1086
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