1915-06-22wl

Usually, Richard Butler’s columns in the Hamilton Spectator appeared on Saturdays. His column was called Saturday Musings, and Butler referred to himself, in his writings as the Old Muser,

In June, 1915, the Old Muser, who also served as the United States Consul in Hamilton, was taking some time off from his freelance submissions to the Saturday editions of the Great Family Journal.

The Old Muser had lived in Hamilton sixty years previously, and along with many other Hamiltonians, went south across the border to enlist with the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Muser did not return to Hamilton until the 1890s when, after retiring as the editor of a newspaper in Ohio, he was appointed to the U.S. consular office.

On June 22, 1915, an article not credited to any specific writer appeared in the Spectator. The column concerned a return visit to Hamilton by a man who like the Muser, had left the city to fight in the civil war. As the writing style was unmistakably the Muser’s, it seemed like he had encountered an old friend from 50 years previously and wrote up the following :

“It is always a sure sign that summertime has come when the old Hamilton boys and girls are returning to the homeland to visit father and mother and all of the loved ones. They are a cheery-looking loot, and if outward signs count for anything, they give evidence of prosperity in their adopted homes.

“Some come every year or two, while others wander back after long years of absenteeism – ‘ ‘Mid  pleasures and palaces though they may roam; be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.’

“What changes great the old-timers ! They wander on King street for hours and rarely ever meet a familiar face. The boys and girls of their youthful days are either in their final home in God’s acre out at the end of York street, or, like themselves, have made a new home across the narrow boundary that divides the flag of the country of their birth from the flag under which prosperity has come to them in their mature years.

“They bring tidings of friends of youth long since forgotten except in name, and call back to memory the Hamilton of the long ago. Some of these old boys went out from Hamilton away back in 1861, when the neighboring country was being rend asunder by civil war, and probably this is their first visit in forty or fifty years.

“They are growing old, and their talk wanders back to the boys of their youth who, with them, served during the civil war. What a roll of names memory has ! No less than two hundred, and probably more, Hamilton boys went out to fight, and but few of them returned.

“George A. Rutley, though not Hamilton born, came to this city from his English home when but a lad. He learned the trade of machinist, and worked in the sewing machine factories that were started in Hamilton. When the war drums were beating across the Niagara river, they started the warlust in his veins, and the next thing heard of him, he had enlisted in the Second New Hampshire regiment and was fighting as vigorously for the Stars and Stripes as any native-born American.

“At the close of the war, he returned to Hamilton and was employed here for years. Then he went to Washington, D. C., and was employed in the government armories, and, being a skillful workman, advancement came with his years of service. Now he has retired , and will make his home in Los Angeles, California, having built a comfortable home for himself and wife in that country of perpetual summer.

“He has lived a prudent life and has laid enough by to keep the wolf from the door. He is only a boy yet, just past the three score and ten line, and shows his youth by his fresh looks. He has a pension of $32 a month, which comes in handy.

“George A. Rutley and his good wife will bid goodbye to Hamilton and old friends on Friday morning next.”¹

¹ “The Wanderer Returns”

Hamilton Spectator.    June 22, 1915