How George courted Maggie

The time was almost a century and a half ago. George was a handsome man, with a wealth of dark curly hair and a full handlebar mustache that would be the envy of any barbershop singer alive today. In 1859, George Washington Johnson had obtained his teaching certificate in Hamilton, Ontario. Taking a position in Glanford Township in Ontario, he met and became enamored of a young local lass, Maggie Clark, three years his junior.

As a part of his courtship, he wrote a poem, When You And I Were Young to express his love for Maggie, who was one of his students. In it, he told of his hopes for their long life together. The poem was published in Canada in a collection entitled Maple Leaves.

We'll never know whether it was the poetry or the handsomeness of George that did the trick. Possibly it was just Mother Nature taking her natural course. It is recorded that in the fall of 1864 George married Maggie. He took a job as a newspaperman in Buffalo. Shortly afterwards, the couple moved on to Cleveland Ohio. However, his dream beside the old mill stream was not to be. On May 12, 1865, only seven months after their marriage, Maggie passed away. George returned to Canada to became a professor of languages at the University of Toronto. He died on January 2, 1917 in Pasadena, California.

James Butterfield, who had come to America as a teenager, was a well trained musician, singer and violinist who started a music publishing business in Indianapolis. He read the poem, liked it and set it to music in 1866. It's not known if George and James ever met.

The memories of George and Maggie live on in the simple, unpretentious music and wistful lyrics of one of the 19th century's finest songs. Perhaps the next time you chance to sing this ballad, you might even picture George sitting on that hillside by the old mill, singing his song as he recalled the wife he hoped would be sitting there beside him. Perhaps you can help to commemorate a courtship between two people who actually lived and loved.

You can find a great arrangement of the number in the Society's Heritage of Harmony Songbook.

(This tale of a song was generated from the Heritage of Harmony Songbook, as well as from other research on George and Maggie.)

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