When You and I Were Young Maggie

When You and I Were Young Maggie

It's lyrics were written as a poem by the Canadian school teacher George Washington Johnson from Hamilton, ontario. Margaret "Maggie" Clark was his pupil. They fell in love and during a period of illness, George walked to the edge of the Niagara escarpment, overlooking what is now downtown Hamilton, and composed the poem. It was published in 1864 in a collection of his poems entitled Maple Leaves. They were married in 1864 but Maggie's health deteriorated and she died on May 12, 1865. James Austin Butterfield set the poem to music and it became popular all over the world. George Washington Johnson survived his young wife for 52 years, dying in 1917. I don't know if he remarried. The schoolhouse where the two lovers met still stands on the escarpment above Hamilton, and a plaque bearing the name of the song has been erected in front of the old building.

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During the 1860s George Johnson was a schoolteacher in Glanford Township near Hamilton. It was there he fell in love with one of his students, Maggie Clark, who was just three years younger than himself. Later, after they became engaged to be married in 1864, George wrote his world famous tribute, "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," to his bride-to-be, while walking in the meadows near his home in Mount Hope during a period when Maggie was ill. George Johnson and Maggie Clark were married on October 21, 1864. Seven months later, May 12, 1865,

Maggie died from tuberculosis. She was interred in the Clark family plot in Whitechurch Cemetery, Glanford. Some of the graves in the cemetery date back to the late 1600s.

The inscription on her gravestone tells that in her brief life, Maggie had known just twenty-three summers.

"MARGARET, WIFE OF G. W. JOHNSON, DIED MAY 12, 1865, AGED 23 YEARS."

A feeling of sadness will come over you knowing that Maggie's time on this earth was unfairly brief. In 1866, George Johnson and a friend J. C. Butterfield slightly revised and joined the lyrics written for Maggie to the music that is now famous throughout the world.

George died on January 2, 1917. He was interred in Hamilton Cemetery. 

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I wandered today to the hills, Maggie, to watch the scene below.
The creek and the creaking old mill, Maggie, where we used to love, long ago.
The green grove is gone from the hills, Maggie, where first the daisies sprung,
The creaking old mill is still, Maggie, since you and I where young,
Oh they say that I'm feeble with age, Maggie, my steps are much slower than then.
My face is a well written page, Maggie, and time all along was the pen
They say we have out-lived our time, Maggie, as dated as songs that we've sung.
But to me you're as fair as you were, Maggie, when you and I were young,