Butler, William

BUTLER, WILLIAM: Methodist; b. in Dublin, Ireland, Jan. 31, 1818; d. at Old Orchard, Me., Aug. 18, 1899. He was graduated at Didsbury College, near Manchester, Eng., 1844, and the same year became a member of the Irish Wesleyan Conference. In 1850 he came to America and joined the New England Conference. In 1856 he was sent to India to be superintendent of a mission to be founded in that country. He located it in Oudh, Northwest India, but had scarcely begun work before the Sepoy rebellion broke out and he was for a time in extreme peril. Quiet being restored, he conducted the mission very successfully, making his headquarters at Bareilly. In 1865 he returned to America because, the mission being organized into a conference, no superintendent was needed. He resumed his pastoral labors till in 1869 he became secretary of the American and Foreign Christian Union, in New York. In 1873 he was for the second time selected by his Church to found a mission, this time in Mexico, and was its superintendent till 1879. He revisited India in 1883 and 1884, and saw the great success which had attended the mission he had founded. His last days were passed at Newton Centre, Mass. He wrote: Compendium of Missions (Boston, 1852); The Land of the Veda (New York, 1872); From Boston to Bareilly and Back (1885); Mexico in Transition (1892).

Bibliography: Clementina Butler, William Butler, the Founder of Two Missions of the M. E. Church, New York, 1902.