James Clyde Butler

JAMES CLYDE BUTLER, M. D. The service of the medical profession in Stafford County has been greatly enhanced by the presence of Dr. J. C. Butler, a skilled surgeon who some years ago, in partnership with his brother, acquired a hospital at Stafford, and has improved its service until it is now one of the best known institutions of its kind in that section of the state. Doctor Butler served for a few months with the Medical Corps of the army at Fort Riley.

He comes of an old and well known family of Johnson County, Tennessee. He was born at Mountain City, that county, May 30, 1871, and this branch of the Butler family came from England and settled in Virginia in colonial times. His father, R. H. Butler, was born at Mountain City in 1847 and has spent the seventy-two years of his life in that one community. In 1863, at the age of sixteen, he enlisted in the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry of the Union army and was in active service until the close of hostilities. For eight years after the war he was clerk of the County Court, and has always been prominent in civic and political affairs and is a republican. For ten years he was chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Johnson County, and for the past eighteen years has given his time to his official duties as county judge. For years he has been identified with the Masonic fraternity.

Judge Butler married Annie Ingram, who was born in 1848 at Elk Cross Roads, North Carolina. Judge and Mrs. Butler have a family of eight children: Ethie L., wife of A. G. Grayson, a railroad man at Pocatello, Idaho; Dr. James C.; Roy H., a cattleman who died in Oregon in 1908; H. H., who was a merchant at Trade, Tennessee, where he died in 1910; Mary, wife of L. E. Mock, a physician and surgeon at St. John, Kansas; Inez Rebecca, wife of Charles H. Hulcher, living with her parents at Mountain City, Tennessee, Mr. Hulcher being a traveling representative for the dry goods and notion house of E. W. King, of Bristol, Tennessee; Dr. W. L., who for a number of years has been associated in practice with his brother James C., and is now in the army as a first lieutenant of Medical Corps, Camp Crane, Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Duah R., who for the past three years has been assistant principal of the high school at Mountain City, Tennessee.

James Clyde Butler grew up in his native community in Eastern Tennessee, attended the public schools and high school there, and for four years had an interesting experience in association with his uncle, W. R. Keys, editor of the Tennessee Tomahawk, performing the part of a printer and doing every form of work connected with a printing and publishing plant. Another year he spent at Knoxville, Tennessee, with the Daily Journal and Tribune. In the meantime he had taken up the study of medicine, and in 1894 he received his M. D. degree from the Tennessee Medical College, now the medical department of the University of Tennessee, at Memphis. At different times he has taken a vacation from the burdens of private practice to pursue post-graduate studies, and three such terms were spent in the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore, and he also took a special course in the Chicago Polyclinic in 1913. For a number of years he has been giving more and more of his time to operative surgery. Doctor Butler began practice at Mountain City in 1894, and remained there in private practice until 1908. From January 1, 1909, until February 6. 1913, he served as chief surgeon of the National Military Home at Johnston City, Tennessee.

November 20, 1912, he and his brother, Dr. William L., bought a local hospital at Stafford, Kansas, from Dr. J. B. H. Dykes. Dr. James C. moved to Stafford in February, 1913, and in connection with the management of the hospital has conducted a general medical and surgical practice. The Butler Hospital was established about 1900. It has accommodations for sixteen patients, and they come from all over Stafford and surrounding counties and even from more distant points in Colorado and Oklahoma. Doctor Butler enlisted for army service July 5, 1917, and was appointed a captain in the Medical Reserve Corps, and served until March 30, 1918, when he received an honorable discharge. Much of his work was done in the base hospital at Fart Riley, Kansas.

While in Tennessee Doctor Butler served as county physician of Johnson County fifteen years, and from 1902 to 1908 was a member of the Medical Examining Board. He is a member of the Stafford County and State Medical societies, and of the American Medical Association. He is a republican, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is affiliated with Mountain City Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Alhambra Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and belongs to Mountain City Lodge of Odd Fellows and Great Bend Lodge of the Elks. He and his brother own a farm of 480 acres in Haskell County, Kansas, at Santa Fe, and at Stafford he has a modern brick home built in 1913, and surrounded with large grounds and shade trees.

In 1895, at Mountain City, Tennessee, Doctor Butler married Miss Sophia Mock, daughter of E. H. and Florence (Wills) Mock, the latter still living at Johnson City, Tennessee. Mr. Mock was a farmer. Mrs. Butler died in 1912 at Johnson City. She was the mother of six children: Bonnie Lou, wife of Thomas Frye, secretary and treasurer of the Anthony & Northern Railway Company, residing at Hutchinson, Kansas; Florence May, at home; Kate, a sophomore in the Stafford High School; Luther Clyde, in school at Topeka; and Ruth and Kyle, both in the grade schools. In 1913, in Indiana, Doctor Butler married Miss Mary Agnes Fenton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Fenton, both now deceased. They have two children: Jane Anna, born May 20, 1915, and James, born May 22, 1917.

Pages 2421-2422.