Person:William Buckner (17)

Research Notes

Who is the William Buckner who died in St Paul's Parish?

per User:Tarchon: In J.B.C. Nicklin's transcription of the St. Paul's Parish Register, the only two William Buckner deaths are dated Nov 11 1725 and Aug 3 1727, whereas in Crozier's Buckners of Virginia the date is given as Nov 14 1729, which agrees with an earlier 1901 transcription from the Magazine of Virginia Genealogy.

William Buckner Jr.'s (son of William Buckner of York Co.) will (surviving only as a fragment) was apparently probated in 1722, and I really have no reason to think he either lived or died in Stafford Co., so this St. Paul's parish record is obviously not his.

It also clearly isn't that of William Buckner (son of John Buckner Jr.), who died in Maryland in 1731.

So who is this? The poor and unconfirmable condition of the St. Paul's registers makes it hard to speculate. (As best I can tell, the original is in private hands and not in good condition, but it's hard to obtain a straight story about it.) My best guess is that this William is a son of Anthony the immigrant. He obviously couldn't be a son of Phillip Buckner the immigrant (d. 1700) or John Buckner Sr. (the immigrant, d. 1695).

In 1706/7, Christopher Harman of Stafford Co. made "William Buckner Jr." one of his executors, so clearly this William was an adult by this time, which almost excludes him from being in the 3rd generation, so he probably wasn't the son of either of John Buckner Sr.'s other two sons, Richard Buckner of Essex and Thomas Buckner of Gloucester. Harman also names Thomas Marshall in his will, who was apparently the grandfather of John Buckner of Stafford (d. 1752), which we can infer from the 1740 Stafford will of Thomas' widow Ann Marshall, so William is clearly closely connected to this otherwise mysterious John Buckner and his sister Sarah (Buckner) Price.

Thus, by circumstantial evidence and process of elimination, he was probably a son of Anthony Buckner Sr. of Stafford Co. (the immigrant). This may have some bearing on identifying Anthony Sr. in England, since the only known Anthony (b. ca. 1644) who he could have been was the son of a William Buckner. Given the usual naming conventions among the English at this time, it would be quite expected that Anthony's two sons would be named after himself and his father.

The other interesting feature of the Nicklin version of the St. Paul's register is that the first William Buckner death was on the same date as the death of an Elizabeth Buckner. An admittedly hypothetical interpretation of this is that Elizabeth was William's wife and that she died giving birth to his son William, who was either stillborn or died from complications of the birth.

One other possibly relevant record is the importation of William Buckner as a headright of William Fleming on 28 Apr 1691 for a land grant in Gloucester Co. VA. The 21 Apr. 1690 importation of Anthony Buckner is suspiciously similar in that, in both cases, they were imported by persons apparently unrelated to the family. It might be reasonable to suppose that both of Anthony Sr.'s sons had been in England for schooling at the time of his decease, and the elder Anthony Jr. returned at first opportunity while his younger brother returned a year later. It might be argued that this was William Buckner, the son of John Buckner, but by this time the other William Buckner was quite well established, so it seems less likely that he would have had his passage paid for by another.

It is fairly certain that he is the William Buckner listed in the Stafford Co. militia around 1701-1702 with several names familiar from Anthony Buckner's neighborhood, Alexander Doniphan, Charles Ellis, Richard Powell. This William Buckner was not an officer, so he clearly wasn't Maj. William Buckner who had moved to York Co. by then. Nevertheless, many commentators see to have assumed that this William was the major. See L.D. Bockstruck, Virginia's Colonial Soldiers, p. 220. This certainly puts his birthdate in the 1670s or early 1680s.

1. ↑ Extracts from the Register of St. Paul's Parish, Stafford (now King George) County, Virginia, in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. (Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Historical Society)
   8:360 [1], Apr 1901.

   D. Wm. Buckner, Nov. 14, 1729.

2. ↑ Nicklin, John Bailey Calvert, and Virginia) St. Paul's Parish (King George County. St. Paul's Parish Register 1715-1798: Stafford & King George Counties (Virginia). (Baltimore [Maryland]: Genealogical Book Co., 1962 to current)
   page needed.
3. ↑ Crozier, William Armstrong. The Buckners of Virginia and the allied families of Strother and Ashby. (New York: Published privately for William Dickinson Buckner by the Genealogical Association, 1907)
   page needed.