W. Corly Butler
Methodist minister in Australia

William Corly Butler (1869 – 15 March 1955), generally known as "Corly" or W. Corly Butler, was a Methodist minister in Australia. Some descendants used "Corly-Butler" as a surname.
History
Butler was born in Dublin, Ireland, a son of James Henry Wilson Butler (c. 1845 – 20 October 1909).
He is reported as travelling to Perth, Western Australia at age 19 and later, as a Primitive Methodist minister, left for South Australia.
South Australia
In late 1892 he was minister of the Primitive Methodist Churches in Glenelg, also preached at Parkside and St Barnabas's church Kadina.
In September 1893 he was registered for celebration of marriages.
In September 1893 he left for the Primitive Methodist Church at Morgan. In 1894 he purchased from his own funds the twin-screw ex-SA Police launch Dione to travel between village settlements. Renamed Glad Tidings, he provided a multitude of services to settlers at New Era, Kingston, Moorook, Pyap, Wakeri, Ramco, Holder, Murtho, Gillen, and Lyrup on a non-denominational basis, and without taking collection or asking for financial contribution.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134908095. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1955, 1845 and 1909.
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This entry incorporates text from “W. Corly Butler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.