MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
JAMES DAVIE BUTLER. 
By the death of James Davie Butler, at his home in Mad¬ 
ison, on the twentieth of November 1905, the Academy lost 
one of its earliest, and in some regards one of its most notable 
members. Born in Rutland, Vermont, on the fifteenth of 
March 1815, a scion of one of the oldest of New England 
families, 1 he passed hence at the ripe age of ninety years and 
eight months, to the last displaying a vigorous interest in the 
things for which this institution stands. 
Prepared for college both at Rutland and at Wesleyan sem¬ 
inary, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, he was graduated in 1836 
from Middlebury (Vermont) college, as the salutatorian of 
his class; his oration being on “The Poetical Merit of the 
Iliad.” 2 Young Butler—it is difficult for those of the present 
generation to imagine our patriarchal friend as a youth—then 
studied for a year at Yale Theological seminary, tutored for 
five terms at Middlebury, and in 1840 completed his theologi¬ 
cal studies at Andover, where his commencement oration was 
on “Chrysostom as a Preacher.” 3 After two years as an Ab¬ 
bott resident—an early sort of fellowship at Andover—Butler 
1 See Butler’s “Butleriana, genealogica et biographica; or Genealogi¬ 
cal Notes concerning Mary Butler and her Descendants,” etc. (Albany, 
N. Y., 1888.) Mary Butler was living in Boston in 1635. The author’s 
autobiography is on pp. 56-61. 
2 Published in the American Quarterly Register, February 1837, pp. 
235-237. 
3 Published as “Life of John Chrysostom” in Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. 1, 
pp. 669-702. 
