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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region's history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.
When the name Joseph Green Butler Jr. is spoken, two spectacular architectural structures come to mind: The Butler Institute of American Art and the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial Museum.
However, not much is mentioned beyond Butler's economic and cultural contributions to our area, so little is known about his personal life and relationships.
Butler was a devoted family man, and the loss of his oldest daughter, Blanche Butler Ford, on May 3, 1913. was devastating.
In his autobiography, "Recollections of Men and Events," Butler writes, "It was my first death-bed scene in all my 70 years of life. The birds were singing in the trees near her residence, and Blanche spoke of them as she held my hand in a last pressure. I recall it so vividly; the scene will never be effaced from my memory while life lasts."
Butler was very close with his daughter and describes their relationship as being "more like brother and sister than father and daughter." Perhaps Butler saw a little of himself in Blanche, which is why he identified with her so closely.
"She sympathized with me in all of my activities and troubles, and I with her in hers. She was charitable to the full extent of her means."
One of Butler's promises to Blanche was to commemorate her life by publishing the many poems she had written.
He writes, "In pursuance of this promise I caused to be printed a limited edition of her verse in a beautifully bound volume, adding a poem, 'There Is No Death,' which was her favorite poem as well as mine."
Butler privately published only 100 copies of "The Singing Year: A Collection of Poems" with the intent for them to be distributed among family and close friends.
Blanche decided on the title before she passed, and as promised, Butler included their favorite poem by John Luckley McCreery:
There is no death! The stars go down
To rise upon some fairer shore,
And bright in Heaven's jeweled crown
They shine for evermore.
There is no death! The dust we tread
Shall change beneath the summer showers
To golden grain or mellow fruit
Or rainbow tinted flowers.
There is no death! The leaves may fall,
The flowers may fade and pass away--
They only wait through wintry hours
The coming of the May
There is no death! An angel form
Walk o'er the earth with silent tread;
He bears our best beloved away,
And then we call them "dead."
He leaves our hearts all desolate,
He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers--
Transplanted into bliss, they now
Adorn immortal bowers
And where he sees a smile too bright,
Or hearts too pure for taint and vice,
He bears them to that world of light
To dwell in paradise.
The birdlike voice, whose joyous tones
Make glad this scene of sin and strife,
Sings now in everlasting song
Amid the tree of life
Born unto that undying life,
They leave us but to come again;
With joy we welcome them--the same
Except in sin and pain.
And ever near us, though unseen,
Their dear, immortal spirits tread;
For all the boundless universe
Is life -- there are no dead