The Buckners of Virginia and the allied families of Strother and Ashby by William Dickinson Buckner and William Armstrong Crozier, ed. (1907) is the most influential Buckner genealogy. Unfortunately, it contains a number of significant errors which have been propagated throughout genealogical databases everywhere. Here I list a few of the most significant ones by page. The other two widest known Buckner genealogies are Anjou's unpublished "Buckner" manuscript and Buckner Descendant Generations by Jim White are unsalvageable, so I'm not going to bother with them.
Gloucester Co. VA was formed in 1651, and obviously not all its records were destroyed by fire since he refers to them repeatedly.
The earliest known record of John Buckner in Virginia is in fact from 1655, when he witnessed a mortgage by Abraham Moone in Lancaster County, VA (Beverley Fleet, Virginia Colonial Abstracts, Genealogical Publishing, 2006, Vol 10, p. 103 - from Lanc. Co. Record Book No. 2, p. 15). This is especially important to note in that it makes an equation with any John Buckner in England after 1655 much more dubious.
That I know of, William Buckner is the next earliest mentioned (1657 - see VA Colonial Abstracts, Vol III, Charles City Co Court Orders 1655-1658, p 116, where Howell Price claimed a headright for both him and John Stith, who figures into the family history later) and then Gerrard Bucknor (1662).
Even in Crozier's time, it was generally accepted by historians that the Thomas Buckner on Ralegh's voyage was Thomas Buckner, a mercer of Oxford and London. Crozier exaggerates the originality of his work here.
This reference to Nathaniel Buckner may be related to the name "Natho. Buckner" in "Public Officers in Virginia 1680",The Virginia magazine of history and biography, 1893, v.1.n.1,p. 251. I strongly suspect this is a typo for "Antho. Buckner".
I would argue that while Richard Buckner's will does say he was a yeoman, it in no way indicates that he was stout. Crozier's conclusion that Berkshire was the home of the Buckners is somewhat in error, though their actual origin was not far off, on the other side of the Thames in Co. Oxfordshire. He has the direction of expansion reversed essentially. Historical records from the 13th and 14th centuries indicate the origin point was probably South Leigh in Oxfordshire.
This transcription of the will is rather abbreviated. The whole will contains much more information. Crozier also has the wrong children inheriting the house at Lechlade. William got that. See http://www.buckbd.com/genea/rychardbwill.html.
This is the first major genealogical mistake. The Dorothy Buckner that Crozier notes as having her estate administered in 1586 is apparently the widow of William Buckner, not Thomas Buckner. He probably made this mistake because Thomas Buckner was her executor. Her full will is available in the Berks. archives (B.R.O. Wills H.93). Thomas's wife, Dorothy (Anne) Buckner died in 1597 and left a fabulously detailed will (also in the Berkshire record office, B.R.O. Wills J.292) that identifies all of her then-living descendants and named her brother Thomas Anne (whom the herald's visitation designates "idiot"), giving us a certain indication that she is the Dorothy Anne in the visitation of Oxford. Thomas's 1587 will (B.R.O. Wills H.120) omitted several of his children, an oversight which Dorothy painstakingly and pointedly corrected. The impression one gets from her will is that Thomas's omissions caused a great deal of family strife, an outcome which she was striving to avoid. Crozier's conclusion from Thomas' will, that Dorothy was the only living child of Thomas, is about as wrong as wrong could be. In fact, it names sons Anthony, Edward, Adam, daughter Anne, and son-in-law William Ruffin, and makes his son John and wife Dorothy executors. How the situation could have been so drastically misinterpreted is a mystery, but I suspect that what happened was the researcher found a record of Dorothy executing the estate, assumed incorrectly that the wife Dorothy was already dead from the 1586 admin. record, and so assumed that the executor Dorothy must have been a daughter. Dorothy's will makes the full list of children: Anthony, Philip, John, Anne Goulding, Thomas, Edward, and Adam. A deceased daughter Lettice (Buckner) Ruffin can be assumed from the mention of her husband William Ruffin as a son in law. See the Cumnor Parish Records website. This mistake in particular is so wrong that it completely wrecks almost everything Crozier has to say about the Buckners in Berkshire. It has often been speculated that the infamous Gustave Anjou was doing the legwork for the book in the UK, and the mind-boggling scope of this mix up suggests that the UK researcher was not the most reliable.
For future reference, I call Thomas Buckner, the son of Richard, Thomas Buckner Sr. of Whitley, an appellation that occasionally appears in the records since he was the free holder of the estate at Whitley. His son Thomas inherited the freehold so I call him Thomas Buckner Jr. of Whitley.
In fact, the name Hugh Buckner occurred several times; one of Hugh's nephews was named Hugh as well as a younger cousin of uncertain relationship, though the name apparently didn't make the trip to America. I find this a little odd though if Hugh really was the grandfather of the immigrant brothers. Did they not like grandpa much?
While Crozier was unable to find records of Phillip Buckner in England after 1667, they nonetheless exist. There were apparently four or five Phillip Buckners alive in England in the 1600s, two definitely in the latter part. The first of those was Crozier's Phillip born in Oxford, for whom there are no other certain records that I know of. The second Phillip was a son of William Buckner of London, who was born in 1642 and apprenticed as a clockmaker to Peter Closon. Phillip apparently had a son Richard who was also a clockmaker. This becomes important on the next page. The other three were Phillip the son of Thomas Buckner Sr. of Whitley (above), Phillip the son of Thomas Buckner Jr. of Whitley (yes, he had one too), and this latter Phillip's son Phillip. Obviously, this profusion of Phillip Buckners makes many of Crozier's conclusions doubtful. I agree with him that the one born in Oxford in 1639 (son of a Thomas) is most likely the immigrant though.
Here is the next major error, Crozier's identification of John Buckner b. in Oxford in 1631 with the one who was married Debora Ferrers (whom I call John Buckner the salter Jr.) He really had no evidence for this, and as it turns out, it's completely and utterly wrong, which can be mostly established from the will of John Buckner the salter Sr. Various records, mostly christenings, show there were at least 15 John Buckners born in England around this time, and the idea that you can just assume one of them is another solely based on their name is pretty ridiculous.
It's difficult to explain why he says "West Wickham and Cumnor are but a few miles apart" since there is no such place as "West Wickham" in Buckinghamshire. There is a West Wickham in Kent, but most likely "West Wickham" in the original marriage record is a clerical mistake for the identical-sounding "West Wycombe," which is in Bucks. and, from other records, is where the Ferrers family lived (or more accurately, the Ferrers alias Turner family). Cumnor and West Wycombe are about 30 miles apart by road.
Here Crozier's ignorance of the many Phillip Buckners causes another major error which has been copied endlessly by credulous researchers. The Phillip Buckner who married Elizabeth Sadler in 1667 in London was almost certainly Phillip Buckner the clockmaker, who started his 7-year apprenticeship in 1660. Anyone who's worked with the life histories of guild tradesmen knows this familiar pattern where the tradesman gets into the guild and straightaway marries. It's not proof, but neither is there any shred of proof that the Phillip in Virginia is the one who married her. An unfortunate tendency in the book is to grab onto any marriage of a Buckner of the name in question and to simply assume with no corroborating evidence that the marriage is of that particular Buckner, even with common names like John and William.
The choice of "without doubt" is interesting for the claim that the Thomas Buckner of Ralegh's voyage was from Berkshire, since all of the early references to him are in Oxford, and his close friend Thomas Harriot was also from Oxford. In fact, out of more than 30 original records relating to this Thomas Buckner, not one has anything to do with Berks. The earliest "of" I have for him is "Thomas Buckner of Bolshipton [in Oxford]" in 1589 when Thomas Rowe, mayor of Oxford, made him free of the mercer's guild.
I am aware of no significant error here; however Crozier failed to discover or perhaps mention that the first Rowland Holt was the victim in one of the most notorious murders in London of the early 1600s. The incident is recounted in a 1635 pamphlet by Henry Goodcole called "Heaven's Speedie Hue and Crie Against Lust and Murther". The details have often been recounted elsewhere, but the gist is that a certain "Canberry Bess" would pretend to be a prostitute and lure the victim into a secluded area (Clerkenwell Fields in this case) and then her accomplice "Country Tom" Sherwood would part the victim from his possessions and life. One might speculate that this is what motivated his son to go into law - his grandson became Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, as Crozier notes. The incident was so notorious in its day that it spawned not only Goodcole's broadside but also a ballad called "Murther upon Murther."
"One Master Holt of Winsor towne,/a Norwich Factor he,/Walking abroad to take the ayre,/felt next their buchery,/ For Sherwood with a fatall blow,/ This goodman kill'd, his quean wil so/ (refrain)/ His cloak, hat, ruffe, from him they took/ eleuen groats also,/ And were about his cloathes to stripe/ his shirt, shooes, hose thereto,/ But being scard away they flye,/ he hath confest this villany.
(Samuel Pepys & Hyder Edward Rollins, A Pepysian garland: black-letter broadside ballads of the years 1595-1639, The University Press, 1922, p. 432)
This list of Thomas' children is incomplete, but aside from that, the listing of (II) Thomas Buckner is wrong. Thomas Buckner, DD, left a rather extensive will which combined with numerous and Oxford university and church records firmly establishes that he was the son of John Buckner of Abingdon, son of Thomas Buckner of Whitley Sr. and Dorothy Anne Buckner. The fact that he named his uncles Edward and Adam, two rare names among the Buckners of this era, firmly cinches the identification. Dorothy (Anne) Buckner even names Thomas as John's son in her will. From parish christenings, it appears that Thomas Buckner the mercer had not one but two sons named Thomas, the first of whom died in infancy. The fate of the second son Thomas is unknown to me, but he was much too young to have been Thomas Buckner, DD. John, William, and Mary are the only children of Thomas Buckner the mercer to whom I can ascribe issue with some confidence.
William Bucknor of Coolefin, Esq., MP, and John Bucknor of Limerick were probably the sons of John Bucknor of Dromore (presumptive founder of the Irish lines), who was the son of Thomas Buckner of Whitley Jr. The argument for this is rather long; fortunately John's sons, brother Leonard (master of the London apothecaries guild), and nephews were prodigious authors of wills. Others of his sons were Capt. Thomas Bucknor of London and Dublin and Gerrard Bucknor of London, who has the distinction of being mentioned in Virginia records around 1662, though it does not appear that he was an immigrant.
Thomas "de Bocknor" was actually Thomas de Bykenore. The theory that "Buckner" evolved from "Bykenore" (Bicknor) seems to be a contribution of Gustave Anjou which has proved to be fanciful at best. Crozier and Anjou both freely mix the two names, without much justification other than wishful thinking and poor eyesight.
Again, the will of Robert "Bucknore" is read by everyone besides Crozier and Anjou as the will of Robert Byknore.
I have some skepticism that Richard Buckner was really from Westphalia, but this tradition is still current in their family today. There are a few minor errors in the following pedigree, but generally Crozier's source, T.E. Sharpe, is pretty reliable as her uncle was apparently married to Admiral Charles Buckner's granddaughter. This is the point at which the book starts to become reasonably accurate.
As mentioned earlier, the Debora Ferrers marriage is wrong.
Francis was really the son of Capt. William Buckner of Bowling Green, Caroline Co., VA, as evidenced by William's 1783 will (prob. 1788), which names 11 other offspring as well. The traditions Crozier is drawing from are a little confused, as Elizabeth Thornton was Francis' mother rather than his wife. William's second wife was named Mary. Capt. William Buckner was a veteran of the Virginia militia in the Revolutionary War; oddly there was another Capt. William Buckner who was in the Virginia Navy at the same time. The third William Buckner in the Revolution fortunately was just a private (VA Line 7th Regiment), so confusion does not completely reign.
I'm Ben Buckner. If you have comments about this page or have something to be added, you can contact me at my Spambot-proof mail link (won't work if you're paranoid enough to have turned off your JavaScript.)
