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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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BUTLER, THOMAS WILLIAM (1868-1913)

BUTLER, THOMAS WILLIAM, lawyer and farmer; b. Melrose, Westmorland Co., N.B., 3 Aug 1868, s/o Thomas Butler and Catherine Sweeny; m. 1901, Mary Ann Holohan, d/o Edward Holohan and Margaret Bayle, of Newcastle; d. Chaplin Island Road, 20 Dec 1913.

T. William Butler spent two years at St Dunstan's College (1888-90) and studied law and worked as an attorney with William Allen Russell of Shediac. He entered business in Newcastle in 1894 as an attorney and notary public and was called to the bar in 1895. Later he shared an office for a short time with T. Herbert Whalen. "A barrister of much ability," he was appointed KC and successor to Warren C. Winslow as representative of the federal minister of justice in the county. He also held an appointment as clerk of the peace.

Butler owned a farm on the Chaplin Island Road and was a "leading spirit" in the Northumberland Agricultural Society. In 1910 he was one of the incorporators of the Newcastle Steamboat Co., of which Patrick Hennessy was president. He had other business and investment interests as well, and was a member of the Newcastle Board of Trade. He served on the Newcastle Town Council for two years, and in 1910 wrote passionate letters to the Chatham World in response to those of "Voter," who contended that Butler was ineligible for a council seat because he lived outside the town limits.

Butler was the organizer for the Conservative party in the county and had "well rooted political convictions." According to The World, however, he had "one weakness," which "kept him from going to the front as his party's candidate for Parliament." The newspaper did not identify the weakness and did not state a cause for his death in 1913, at age forty-five.

Butler and his wife, Mary Ann Holohan, had three sons, including James Edward Patrick Butler, who was managing editor of the Union Advocate between 1936 and 1939, and later a member of faculty of St Thomas College in the field of history.

Sources

[b] census [m] official records [d] Leader 24 Dec 1913 / Advocate 5 Dec 1894, 27 Nov 1895, 28 Jun 1910; Commercial World 27 Mar 1958; PPNB (re. J. E. P. Butler); World 4 May 1910 (for example), 24 Dec 1913


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