Person:Samuel Buckner (1)

Samuel Buckner of Gloucester Co., Virginia was a vestryman of Petsworth Parish and churchwarden in 1730 after Francis Buckner, and it is generally assumed that he must have been another son of Thomas Buckner of Gloucester. He was sheriff in 1732 and a burgess for the county in 1744 (removed in 1745 after taking a position in the colonial administration), and later justice. Crozier's Buckners of Virginia incorrectly states that he died in 1745, but later court records indicate that his will was made in 1763. He married as his second wife Mary (Timson) Buckner, who was the widow of Thomas Buckner of Caroline County. This Thomas Buckner was believed by Crozier to be another son of Thomas Buckner of Gloucester and thus brother of Samuel, but it is more likely that Thomas of Caroline was a son of John Buckner Jr., and thus a first cousin of Samuel Buckner. Samuel's only known natural children were four daughters by an unknown first wife (Crozier's conclusion that the wife was Anne Alexander is perhaps based on a faulty interpretation of the record he quotes, though a tombstone does reveal that her given name was Ann), so it is possible that his marriage to Thomas Buckner's widow was an attempt to consolidate the family land in Gloucester, since the male line of Thomas Buckner of Gloucester probably ended with Samuel. His eldest daughter Dorothy married Baldwin Matthews Buckner, son of Thomas Buckner of Caroline County and Mary Timson. Mary Timson Buckner's will also indicates that Samuel Buckner's estate was indebted to Thomas Buckner's, which might also explain why Thomas' children seem to have come into Gloucester estates that apparently had been in Samuel's line.