Thomas Stalker Butler (November 4, 1855 – May 26, 1928) was a U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, serving from March 4, 1897 until his death, having been elected to the House sixteen times. Thomas S. Butler was also the father of the famous Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler.
Born in Uwchlan Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, he attended the common schools, West Chester State Normal School, and Wyer’s Academy in West Chester. He later studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1877, and commenced practice in West Chester. From 1885 to 1889 and again in 1927-1928 he served as trustee of the West Chester State Normal School. Butler was appointed judge of the fifteenth judicial district of Pennsylvania in 1888 and stood as an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1889. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1892.
Elected to Congress in his first term as an Independent Republican, he was elected as a Republican for each succeeding term. While in Congress, he was chairman of the United States House Committee on Pacific Railroads (Fifty-ninth through Sixty-first Congresses) and member of the United States House Committee on Naval Affairs (Sixty-sixth through Seventieth Congresses).
Butler died in office and was buried in Oaklands Cemetery, West Chester, Pennsylvania. His home at West Chester, The Butler House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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“In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Under the heavens that know not what years be
The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements
Uttered even what they will in times far hence—
All of us gone out of the reach of change—
Immortal in a picture of an old grange.”
—Edward Thomas (1878–1917)
“There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)