Obituary & Death Notice

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Jay Butler Dead

Jay Butler Dead.
Mr. Jay S. Butler, who for ten years was a well-known Buffalo newspaper man, died of consumption at Asheville, N. C., Wednesday night, aged 44 years. Mr. Butler was born on a farm in the town of Volney, Oswego County. His early struggles to secure an education were severe, but successful. He attended the Falley Seminary at Fulton and the Methodist College at Lima, and finally graduated from Cornell University in 1870. His first newspaper work was done at Oswego, where he became city editor of the Times. He was a short time at Erie, and came to Buffalo in 1874, securing employment on the Express as a reporter. In three years he had risen to the editorship, and was in charge of the paper when it was sold to James N. Matthews in January, 1878. Mr. Butler remained with the Express as a news editor and editorial writer till September, 1884, his service having lasted more than ten years. While in Erie and Buffalo he read law in the intervals of his newspaper work, and took the degree of LL.B, at Hamilton College and was admitted to the bar in 1875, but never practiced. He was one of the earliest members of the City Club, and remained a member during his stay in Buffalo. He will be well and kindly remembered by all the older members of that somewhat famous social organization. Mr. Butler began life as a Republican, but he had an instinctive and intense dislike of corruption and bossism and all kinds of wrongdoing in politics as well as in everything else, and as one scandal followed another during the Grant Administration and later, he was gradually alienated from the party of his first choice and became an independent in his views. He knew Mr. Cleveland very well and admired him very much, and when he became a candidate successively for Mayor, Governor, and President, he had no warmer or more sincere supporter than Mr. Butler. In January, 1885, Mr. Butler became editor of the Eimira Gazette, the first Democratic paper for which he had ever written. His editorship was very successful, and he made for himself a warm place in the hearts of the Elmira people. In the spring of 1889 he had a severe attack of typhoid fever, from which he rallied very slowly, and in fact never made a full recovery. His constitution, never strong, was fatally undermined at that time, and the way thus made easy for the malady to which he finally succumbed. Among the friends who most tenderly cared for him during his illness in Elmira was Miss Brockway, daughter of the Superintendent of the State Reformatory. On his convalescence he was married to Miss Brockway, and they went to Europe on a wedding trip of several months' duration, which it was hoped might restore Mr. Butler's health. He returned in the fall of 1859, considerably improved, and obtained employment on the New York Times. The work was beyond his strength, and after a few months he was compelled to relinquish it. He spent last summer in camp at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, where he had several visits with Mr. Cleveland, and whence he wrote interesting letters to the Times. When winter came on he went to Asheville, where the Koch treatment was applied to his case, but without avail. Jay Butler was a man whom his close friends held very dear. Such friends were perhaps not very many, because he did not open his heart to chance acquaintances. While always courteous, he had much reserve; while he enjoyed society, his health, always precarious, and his incessant devotion to his work, made it impossible for him to indulge his social nature. He was the soul of honor and generosity. Frugal and prudent in expenditure for his own personal gratification, his hand was open to his friends. He had an intense sympathy with all truly philanthropical and reformatory ideas, an intense hatred of all wrong and meanness. He was modest, faithful, upright, true-a man to love and a man/to mourn.
--Buffalo Courier, Buffalo, New York, May 15, 1891 Page 4

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