From County Down to Chestertown: John Butler Yeats’ unlikely grave

A traveler heading north of Warrensburg along state Route 9 might, when passing the Chestertown Rural Cemetery, glimpse the fluttering of an Irish flag among the rows of somber gravestones. There lies the body of Irish artist, essayist and critic John Butler Yeats – Father to the poet William Butler and the artist John Jr. (Jack) Yeats. Born March 16, 1839, in County Down, Tullish Parish, Ireland, his burial in this small Adirondack hamlet, thousands of miles from his native land, is a curiosity.

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he began a career in law only to change course and began the study of drawing in 1867. Karla Vecchia, of Princeton University Library, notes that he achieved moderate success as a portrait artist.

He came to New York City in 1907 with his daughter Lily, intending to stay only a few weeks. He never did return to Ireland. According to a New York Times article published two weeks after his death, Yeats had told artist John Sloan he did not “want to go home and live the role of father to a famous son.”

Yeats took up lodging at the Petitpas’ boarding house at 317 West 29^th Street. There, in the Petitpas’ street-level restaurant, he attracted artists and writers for dinner and conversation, It is there he made his Chestertown connection – poet and Writer Jeanne Robert Foster.

Foster was born Julia Elizabeth Oliver in March 1879 at a home on Mill Creek road in Johnsburg. According to biographer Richard Londraville, the Oliver family moved from Johnsburg to Olmsteadville, and then to Chestertown as Jeanne’s father, a logger, sought work. In 1896 the family moved to Glens Falls where Jeanne’s Father worked as a carpenter for the Glens Falls Opera.

The following year Jeanne married Matlack Foster and the newlyweds moved, first to Rochester, and then to Boston where Jeanne studied writing at Harvard. During the early years of her marriage, Jeanne Robert Foster worked as a model and actress. In 1911 she moved to New York to accept a position with the American Review of Reviews.

On the recommendation of a friend, she went to dinner at Petitpas’ to see for herself the cultural scene and witness John Butler Yeats for herself. According to Foster, as related in the Richard Londraville biography, she took a small table in one corner and order her meal. Fascinated by the conversation she overheard at Yeats table, she began taking notes. Yeats noticed her and invited her to join them. This began a friendship that lasted until Yeats death.

In his final years, as his health failed, Jeanne looked over him. He died February 3, 1922 with Jeanne at his bedside. His funeral was held at the Episcopal Church of the Holy apostles in New York. His family in Ireland did not have the funds needed to transport his body home. For that winter his body rested in a vault in a Westchester cemetery.  Jeanne offered a burial site next to her husband’s family plot in the Chestertown Rural Cemetery. He was buried there in July of 1922.

In 1967, Foster wrote the Irish Senate requesting they send a ship to bring Yeats back to his country of birth but the reply she received told her only a family member could make such a request. Foster turned over ownership of the plot to Yeats biographer William M. Murphy, believing he, and then his children, would tend to the grave.

A headstone of Vermont marble, engraved with a Celtic cross, marks Yeats’ grave. The inscription “In remembrance of John Butler Yeats of Dublin, Ireland, Painter and Writer” was written by his famous son William Butler. A collection of small stones is assembled on top of Yeats’ grave marker, left there by visitors paying homage to the celebrated Irishman.

In a 1978 interview, life-long Chestertown resident and shopkeeper Mark Fish recalled discussing the burial plans with Foster. “He (Yeats) stated he wanted to be buried under the pines.” Just a few feet from his grave a white pine rises a hundred feet into the sky over Chestertown Rural Cemetery, sheltering John Butler Yeats’ final resting spot with its outstretched boughs.

*Note: After publishing this article, I received the following email concerning the youngest son and have amended the text:

“I, and all Yeats family biographers, would prefer that you refer to the youngest son of John Butler and Susan Yeats, with his correct title, “Jack B. Yeats”. To use any other is an insult to the man’s own preference as to how he wished to be titled. Whilst “Jr” may be commonplace in the U.S.A, it was not so in the Yeats family. I was the initiator of the first John Butler Yeats Seminar in 2001 and the subsequent seminars of 2004 and 2007 which were held in Chestertown.” — Declan Foley