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and a genial host. He is foremost in the advancement of all interests for the benefit of Saint Louis, the city of his long residence, where he enjoys that esteem which a career of honor and integrity always demands. He is now in his seventy-second year, has been before the public in many positions of trust for over half a century, and from the record of his youth and lack of advantages in his early days, is a noble example of the self-made man. He is in perfect health, without a single faculty impaired, and is the acknowledged head of the Missouri Bar.

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.

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'HIS distinguished lawyer, soldier and politician, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire, on the 5th day of November, 1818. His father was John Butler, of the same town, who was a Captain of Dragoons during the war with England, in 1812, serving for a time under General Jackson at New Orleans. After the close of the war, he followed the sea, sometimes as master of a vessel, sometimes as supercargo and again as a merchant engaged in the West India trade. He was a staunch Democrat in politics, and when it cost the loss of caste, almost, to live in New Hampshire and adhere to the tenets of that party. In the town of Deerfield, at that time, there were but seven other voters besides himself who cast their ballots with that party, and they all formed a little coterie, were avoided by the Federalists, and looked down upon as men to be shunned, with all the elements of danger in them. General Butler's grandfather, Captain Zephaniah Butler, of Connecticut, was also a soldier and was with Wolf at the storming of Quebec, serving also in the Continental army during the American Revolution, so that the subject of this sketch comes very naturally by his fighting qualities.

His mother was a descendent of the Cilleys of New Hampshire, who were of Scotch-Irish blood one of whom fought at the battle of the Boyne. The famous Colonel Cilley, who fought at the battle of Bennington under General Stark, was a relative of his mother and who, as

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tradition hath it, had never seen a cannon until then, and sat upon one while it was discharged.

When General Butler was but five months old, his father died of yellow fever, and he with another brother was left to the care of their widowed mother, who had but very slender means of support; she was of that type of New England women who never despair under difficulties, made the most of her slight opportunities and succeeded in giving her children an education.

Benjamin was a diminutive, sickly child, far from evincing those traits of pugnacity which characterized his later years, and made him the indomitable soldier, into which the Civil War developed him; he was just the reverse of anything that savored of his taking his own part, happy in having an older brother to take up his quarrels for him. It is said that he can hardly recollect when he could not read, and was ravenous in his taste in that direction, which he has never lost. He always remembered what he read and in the scarcity of books, in the days of his boyhood, he was compelled to read the same over many times so that he soon had nearly all that he could procure by heart. His mother was a deeply religious woman and the great family Bible was considered a sufficient library for herself; to please her, young Benjamin would often learn whole chapters and repeat them to her on the quiet New England Sabbath evenings, and once he committed the whole of that uninteresting first chapter of Matthew to memory. Thus training that wonderful gift, called memory, when young, he all through life retained his remarkable power in this direction, which is phenomenal.

In 1828, when young Benjamin had attained his tenth year, his mother removed to Lowell, Massachusetts, then a small town of only two thousand inhabitants. There she opened a boarding house, to increase her income and to enable her to continue the education

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