Buckingham Archives | pierrepenny

March 15, 2021January 3, 2024

Mr. and Mrs. James Buckingham celebrate their Fiftieth

It’s November, 1906, and there is a big party going on at the Buckingham house in Putnam, Ohio. 300 people reportedly attend. The large photo above is their family photo taken at the event. My grandfather, Sherwood Pinkerton, Jr. is kneeling in the right corner, next to his brother, David Wills. Behind him is his mother, Julia Buckingham standing next to her father, James Buckingham. In the center is James’ bride of 50 years, Jane Peebles Wills Buckingham in her wedding dress made of silk, lace, hoop skirt and having a “little old-fashioned waist.” Behind Jane are her two other daughters. To her left is Mary Humphries Greene, who is a recent widow and a current resident in the house. To her right is Elise Wills Darlington, mother of the four other boys in the photo, who are (counter-clockwise from the right, Henry Buckingham, John Hardenburg, Frank Graef and James Buckingham. The young woman with her arms around Frank is 16-year old Eleanor Young, daughter of the Buckinghams’ daughter, Ellen Wood Young, who died of childbirth complications. The baby, Eleanor was taken in and cared for by the Buckinghams.

The man in the back on the left is probably Frank Darlington, Elise’s husband. The Darlingtons live in Indianapolis.

The old woman in the chair, who doesn’t seem to be part of the family portrait could be Mrs. A. Spencer Nye of Chillicothe, related to the notable abolitionist of Putnam and veteran of the War of 1812, whose house was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

January 1891 wedding announcement of Julia Buckingham and Sherwood Pinkerton, parents of my grandfather, Sherwood Jr.

It’s January 1891, two months after Julia’s sister, Ellen, died of childbirth. Because a large wedding wasn’t fitting, Julia Buckingham and Sherwood Pinkerton had a small wedding on a Wednesday that took place at the house in 1891. After a honeymoon in the South, they lived in the Buckingham house, because “any sort of a separation from his one remaining daughter the sorrowing father feels that he could not endure.”

Julia Buckingham Pinkerton in wedding dress in 1891, with baby Sherwood in 1893, with Sherwood and David in 1898, with Ned and James in 1916. She died in 1920.

March 17, 2015October 22, 2020

Anna Hale Buckingham’s engagement valentine

This valentine was created in 1819 by Anna Hale when she was 24, for her fiance, Alvah Buckingham. Somehow the delicate folded paper snowflake cut-out has survived all these years — almost 200 years. I acquired it from Uncle George. It was tucked away in a plastic sleeve in his family history notebook. A poem with 18 verses is written within each fold, front and back.

Young Alvah Buckingham, pioneer settler in southeastern Ohio, took a trip to Glastonbury, Connecticut in 1819 and met Anna Hale, leader of the village choir. Romance ensued along with a hurried wedding, and one week later they rode horseback together to Ohio to start their new life.

The Powers above cannot pretend
To say I’ve a false story pen’d

In the inside sweet turtle dove
I’ve wrote a Moral of my love

These pretty hearts which you behold
Will break where these leaves unfold

Like a lovesick lover full of pain
Love wounded is and breaks on twain

My dearest dear and blest devine
Those pretty hearts like yours and mine

‘But Cupid has between us set a Cross
Which makes me to lament my love

The little birds sing on each tree
To show happiness and how blest they be

Each one chase his own mate
What pleasure they in such a state

But now to let our hearts have ease
Let them both be joined like these

For mine as true as is the Sun
Set both our hearts be joined in one

When very birds did grace the spring
And tune Alphra Buchanham they sing

Liked these sweet birds let us agree
Nor be so cruel unto me

Blessed the day happy the time
That should cause you to be mine

When first my eyes did you behold
I prized you more than precious gold

If you take it in good part
I shall be glad with all my heart

But if you do the same refuse
The paper burn and me excuse

Marriage

March 10, 2015January 25, 2023

Alvah and Anna Buckingham of Putnam, Muskingham County, Ohio

Many Springfield Twp. Farms Became Part of the City
Zanesville Sunday Times Signal, Sept. 28, 1958

Dinner at the Pinkerton house in Toledo, 1954. Paintings of Anna and Alvah Buckingham on the wall.

I never thought of my ancestors as being activists by looking at these two in the paintings that I grew up with in my grandparents dining room. But now I see them in an entirely different way! They came from fierce New England Puritan stock who believed that the laws of God trumped the law of the land that allowed slavery. Putnam was a small village across the river from Zanesville Ohio, and my New England ancestors were among the original settlers. Zanesville, on the other hand, was settled by folks from Kentucky and West Virginia. And there were fights.

Part of the Underground Railroad, this house has several hideaways. The owner, Major Horace Nye (veteran of the War of 1812) was threatened so many times by his foes that he slept with a pitchfork next to him for protection. Photo ©1999 Penny Gentieu

My ancestors’ names are Alvah and Anna Buckingham. Alvah helped build the Putnam Presbyterian Church in 1835, which was actively involved in the abolitionist movement. William Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the first minister of the church. Frederick Douglass spoke there in 1852. For many years, the church held a monthly prayer service for the abolition of slavery. The first Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention took place in Putnam, as well as the first publication of the abolitionist newspaper, The Philanthropist. What a great community!

In 1799, when Alvah Buckingham was 8, his family moved to southeast Ohio, on horseback. In 1819 Alvah met Anna Hale of Glastonbury, Connecticut on a trip back east and married her. They built a house on Moxahala Avenue in 1821. (Three generations have subsequently lived in the house.) He was in the mercantile business with his brother and brother-in-law and later, opened a lumber trade. In 1852, he built the first grain elevator in Chicago, and owned the first grain elevator in Toledo.

In 1865 when Alvah was 74, he and Anna moved to New York City to be closer to their two daughters who also lived in New York City. They owned a home at 13 East 12th St.

In 1866, Alvah took a trip out west with his youngest son, James in a spring wagon over rough roads, “without any apparent fatigue.” (James is my GG Grandfather and grandfather of Elise Pinkerton, born 1904, see blog post, The Tea-Dyed Brown Dress.)

Anna Buckingham died of pneumonia on September 23, 1867, and her remains were brought back to Ohio. Alvah Buckingham died 11 days later, on October 4, 1867.

In 1639, Alvah Buckingham’s Puritan ancestors settled the farthest most reaches of America – Milford, Connecticut. Alvah was descended from immigrant ancestor, Thomas Buckingham, born in Minsden, Herts, England. Alvah’s father, Ebenezer Buckingham, fought in the Revolutionary War.

My grandfather, Sherwood Pinkerton Jr. later to be president of the family business, The Pinkerton Tobacco Company in Toledo, Ohio, is sitting in lower right corner. His mother, Julia Buckingham Pinkerton is standing behind him, next to her father, James Buckingham. James’ wife, Jane Wills Buckingham is in the center. The room they are in is the front right side of the 405 Moxahala Avenue house, shown above. Photo circa 1905.

Sherwood Pinkerton with the paintings of his great grandparents, in his Central Avenue apartment in Toledo, November 1979, six weeks before he passed away.

Paintings of Anna and Alvah Buckingham, inherited by my mother, were donated to the Zanesville Art Institute in 1980. The museum gave them to the Pioneer and Historical Society of Muskingham County. The paintings now hang in the Increase Mathews house in Putnam, owned by the historical society. Photo ©1999 Penny Gentieu

Increase Mathews house in Putnam, where the portraits of Alvah and Anna Buckingham hang.

March 8, 2015July 6, 2017

The Tea-Dyed Brown Dress

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I recently found these photos in my inherited family albums. The first one, from 1908, is of my grandfather’s only sister, Elise. I never knew anything about her, but learned that she died at age 4 of typhoid fever, the year this photo was taken. The second photo is my Aunt Elise in 1925. I realized that she was named after this little girl. The third is my Aunt Julia in 1933, who was named after my grandfather’s mother, Julia Buckingham Pinkerton.

About 20 years ago, when my daughter was five, Aunt Elise gave me the dress. It wasn’t in any condition to put on my daughter. I didn’t know the story of the dress, but it seemed spooky. I kept it in a drawer, wrapped in tissue paper. I took it out last week when I discovered these photos.

Imbued with the mystery of the child who died in 1908 and my aunts who wore the dress for formal portraits by the famous studios of Bachrach in 1925 and CL Lewis in 1933, it is disintegrating at the sleeves, having been hand-patched in various places apparently long ago.

There was a lump in the fabric, something in the pocket — I was a little afraid to see what it was! I pulled it out, and the message from my female ancestors, going all the way back to my great grandmother Julia Buckingham Pinkerton, who probably sewed it, couldn’t have been sweeter. It was a century-old hand-crocheted hankie with a girl with a bow in her hair and bounce in her step, and the words, Tuesday’s child is full of grace.