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E. D. Buckman genealogical collection on the Buckman and allied families
Notifications
Held at: Historical Society of Pennsylvania [Contact Us]1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Buckman family was one of the earliest British families to settle in Pennsylvania. In 1682, Joan Bagham Buckman, widow of Edward Buckman of Sussex County, England, set sail with several other family members on William Penn’s Welcome from England to America. While at sea, smallpox broke out on the ship and many passengers died, including the widow Buckman and at least two of her children. The Buckmans who survived the journey to Pennsylvania were William Buckman (circa 1650-1716), his wife Sarah and four of their children, and William’s sister Ruth Buckman (circa 1659-1716).
Prior to their journey, the Buckmans had purchased property in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from William Penn. In 1683, William and his family made their way to Newtown to claim their land. William worked mostly as a carpenter and became a member of the Middletown Friends Meeting. After his first wife died in 1690, he married Elizabeth Wilson (1682-circa 1731). Together they had four children.
Also in 1683, Penn granted Ruth Buckman land in nearby Fallsington, Pennsylvania; though by the late 1680s, she was living in Burlington County, New Jersey, with her new husband Richard Harrison (circa 1664-circa 1742). The couple went on to to have several children.
Edwin Dawson Buckman (1823-1891) descended from William Buckman. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1848, married Rebecca Lowner (Lownes) that same year, and worked as a doctor in Philadelphia. He spent much of the latter part of his life compiling the history and genealogy of the Buckman family. At one point he announced his intentions to publish a book on the family, although it is unclear if the book was ever published. However, some of his findings were published in the Doylestown Democrat in the early 1880s.
The E. D. Buckman genealogical collection on the Buckman and allied families consists of forty-seven volumes that together present a comprehensive family history representing the first through ninth generations. The volumes' original order and call numbers have been retained, though their order is somewhat chaotic (e.g. the index to Gen Bu1:3 [Volume 3] is in Gen Bu1:18 [Volume 18]).
While the Buckman family is the one most prominently featured, several volumes are devoted to allied families including the Atkinsons, Ashtons, Burgesses, Blakers, Hestons, Harrisons, Paxons, Martindales, Janneys, Coopers, Hibbs, and Tomlinsons, among others. Several volumes also contain similar accounts of the history of the Buckman family, the "final" versions of which are published in newpaper clipping in Gen Bu1:15 (Volume 15). Other volumes contain correspondence to E. D Buckman and copies of abstracts, minutes, and vital records from Friends' meetings. In the first six volumes of the collection, family members are arranged by number. Starting with the earliest generations (the Widow Buckman, is number 1; her children are numbers 2, 3, 4, and so on), these numbers of used to track individuals throughout these volumes. The family numbers reappear in throughout the volumes, especially in Volumes 13 and 14 where individuals are listed alphabetically, and the family number indexes (Volumes 30 and 33).
Further descriptions of some of the volumes can be found in the inventory below.
People
- Allen family.
- Beans family.
- Betts family.
- Fell family.
- Knowles family.
- Moon family.
- Palmer family
- Paxson family.
- Harrison family.
- Higgins family.
- Kinsey family.
- Paist family.
- Skelton family.
- Alexander family.
- Armitage family.
- Ashton family.
- Atkins family.
- Austin family.
- Baker family.
- Burgess family.
- Hough family.
- Taylor family.
- Wiggins family.
- Bunting family.
- Blaker family.
- Heston family.
- Warner, Thomas.
- Pemberton.
- Tomlinson family.
- Martindale family.
- Strawn family.
- Boyer family.
- Briggs family.
- Conrad family.
- Dunnett family.
- Faulk family.
- Jenkins family.
- Jones family.
- Lancaster family.
- Thomas family.
- Burgess family--Pennsylvania--Bucks County.
Subject
- Buckman family
- Genealogy & local history
- Genealogy--Archival resources--Pennsylvania
- Genealogy--Library resources--Pennsylvania
- Genealogy--Pennsylvania--Bucks County
- Genealogy--Sources
- Genealogy
- Church records--Pennsylvania--Bucks County
- Soldiers
- Quakers--Pennsylvania--Bucks County--Church records
- Maps--Pennsylvania--Bucks County
- Families--Pennsylvania--Bucks County
Place
- Publisher
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Cary Majewicz
- Finding Aid Date
- ; 2010
- Sponsor
- Processing made possible by a generous donation from Norman Bryant Buckman via the Buckman Family Fund.
- Access Restrictions
-
The collection is open for research.
Collection Inventory
This book contains clippings of E. D. Buckman's "Genealogical History of the Buckman Family." His findings on the family were published in the Doylestown Democrat and possibly other newspapers that are not identified, starting in 1881. Scattered among Buckman's clippings are others on family marriages and deaths, related families and town, and unrelated stories and poems. The clippings cover most of the book's pages, except for several pages at the back revealing that the book was once used as a doctor's log of patients' conditions and treatments.
The volume mostly contains letters sent to E. D. Buckman from family members concerning family history. Together they present one way used by Buckman to gather information on the family. There is an occasional letter or two from Buckman, but the vast majority is incoming correspondence. Some individuals provided detailed genealogical lists along with their correspondence. All the letters are tipped onto the volume's pages and are in roughly chronological order dating from 1853 to 1885.
This volume continues the letters sent to E. D. Buckman during his search for information about the Buckman family's history. Interspersed among letters from family members dating from 1885 to about 1889 would appear to be some of Buckman's own compilations of notes on various family lines.
Clippings take up most of the first half of the book. Most cover the history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, though a few discuss health issues and other topics. The clippings are followed by a list of marriages, which is then followed by registers pertaining to allied families.