Montgomery County PA Archives Biographies.....Buckman, Thomas December 11, 1802 - September 20, 1892
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Source: Biographical Annals of Montgomery County Pennsylvania, T. S. Benham & Company and the Lewis Publishing Company, 1904
Author: Ellwood Roberts, Editor

  THOMAS BUCKMAN, deceased, for many years a highly 
respected and influential citizen of Jenkintown, Montgomery 
county, Pennsylvania, where he was actively and extensively 
engaged in agricultural pursuits, was born December 11, 
1802, a son of Thomas and Mary (Harding) Buckman.

  The educational advantages enjoyed by Thomas Buckman 
during his boyhood days, and which thoroughly qualified him 
for a life of usefulness and activity, were obtained at the 
Friends' School, situated in Abington township, Montgomery 
county. After completing his studies he rented a farm which 
was located in the vicinity of Jenkintown, and after 
operating this successfully for a short period he purchased 
a seventy acre farm in Cheltenham township, which he 
cultivated and tilled for a number of years thereafter, 
finally disposing of it to John Fork. He then purchased 
another farm of one hundred and eleven acres from Mr. 
Troutwine, this land being located near Rydal Station, 
Montgomery county, and resided there up to the time of his 
demise, September 20, 1892, in the ninetieth year of his 
age. He was practical and progressive in his methods, 
painstaking and careful in the performance of his labor, and 
his broad acres yielded him a goodly return and large 
financial gain. He was just and conscientious in all his 
affairs of life, and bore the respect and esteem of all who 
knew him. He was a good citizen, a loving husband, and an 
indulgent father.

  Mr. Buckman was twice married. His first wife, whose 
maiden name was Ann Comly, a daughter of Clement and Rebecca 
(Jones) Comly, bore him seven children, namely: Amos, 
deceased; Alfred C., deceased; Mary, deceased; Jacob T., 
deceased; William, deceased; Thomas and Joseph Buckman. The 
mother of these children died about 1861. Mr. Buckman then 
married, secondly, Mary Ann Brooke, born August 1, 1830, 
daughter of Thomas and Mary (Reyner) Brooke, who bore him 
two children: Linford, who died in infancy; and Jessie T., 
who died at the age of nearly nine years. The paternal 
grandfather of Mrs. Brooke was general William Brooke, 
whose history is narrated as follows:

  General Brooke was born in Limerick township, Montgomery 
county, Pennsylvania, May 12, 1746, and was the oldest son 
of Matthew Brooke and Sarah Reese, and the third in descent 
from the emigrant John Brooke, who with, his wife came from 
England to take up a grant of land of seven hundred and 
fifty acres purchased from William Penn in England. The 
vessel arrived at Philadelphia in the year 1698, though both 
John Brooke and his wife died on board as she was coming up 
the Delaware, and were buried at or near what is now 
Cooper's Point, Camden, New Jersey. His will was probated at 
Trenton and is a very interesting document, and photographs 
have been made and are in the possession of a number of his 
descendants.

  At the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, General 
Brooke, who was then not quite thirty years of age, 
volunteered his services, and was commissioned a captain in 
the Fourth Company, Chester County Volunteers, on May 14, 
1777, as a major in the Fourth Battalion in 1779, and as a 
major in the Sixth Battalion, May 10, 1780. He also served 
as a major in the Fourth Regiment of Foot, containing six 
hundred and seventy men, of which Lieutenant-Colonel Richard 
Willing was the commanding officer. It was while serving as 
a captain that General Brooke had the following experience, 
as related by George Smith, M. D., in his "History of 
Delaware County, Pennsylvania:"

  "It sometimes happened that some of our military scouts 
were captured by the enemy, when not sufficiently on their 
guard. About this period, such a party under the command of 
the late General William Brooke, of Haverford, who was then 
a captain, were one night taking their ease at a house, late 
the property of George Swain, when the house was suddenly 
surrounded by a larger party of the enemy. Brooke determined 
not to be taken, leaped from a window and ran, but in 
getting over the fence into the road found that a partial 
dislocation of his knee had happened. Putting his foot 
through the fence, and giving his leg a quick extension, the 
joint was brought into a proper condition, when he hastily 
made his escape."

  During his absence with the army on one of the forages 
made into the territory surrounding Philadelphia, while the 
British army were in possession of the city, his dwelling 
was plundered of nearly every article of food and furniture, 
so that his wife, with two young children, was obliged to 
turn out in the snow and seek shelter elsewhere. This 
outrage afterwards formed the basis of a claim against the 
government, the original papers of this claim being on file 
at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in a volume of 
manuscript entitled "Depredations by British Army, Chester 
Cotu1ty, 1777," as follows: "An estimate of Goods and 
Chattels taken and destroyed from William Brooke by the 
British Armies under the command of Lord Cornwallis on the 
11th of December, 1777.

 £ s. d
  Six sheep, six cows and two calves.4515 ..
  Beds, bedding and wearing apparel.100.. ..
  Household and kitchen furniture..  20.. ..
  Provision and poultry ...........  1210 ..
  Fat and store hogs ..............  2117  6
  Two tons of hay and grain in the
  sheaf ......................... 10.. ______________
                                      210 2  6
Chester S. S.:
Personally appeared before me, one of the justices, etc. for 
the County of Chester, William Brooke, and on his solemn 
oath doth declare and say that the above amount is just and 
trite as it stands stated and that he hath received no part 
thereof.

  Given under my (obliterated) the
 27th August, 1783. JNO. BARTHOLOMEW.
 Endorsed on back "Haverford."
 Win. Brooke's account.

  Among said papers is the claim of John Lindsay, a 
son-in-law of General Brooke, who resided near him in 
Haverford, for goods and chattels destroyed by the British 
Army on the following day 12th of December, amounting to 
£134 3s. 6d.

  General Brooke performed further special military service, 
as will be seen from the minutes of the. Supreme Executive 
Council, then sitting at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, under date 
of October 2, 1777, as follows:

Ordered: "That Col. Evans, Col. William Evans, Col. Gibbons, 
Col. Thomas, Capt. Thomas Kevis, Capt. William Brooke, Capt. 
Jacob Rudolph be authorized and required to collect without 
delay, from such of the inhabitants of the County of 
Chester, as have not taken the oath of allegiance and 
abjuration or who have aided or assisted the enemy. Arms and 
accoutrements, blankets, shoes and stockings, for the use of 
the army; that they appraised the same when taken, according 
to their quality, allowing at the rate of three pounds for a 
new single blankets, and give certificate for the same to 
the owner; that they called to their aid the militia of the 
commonwealth, who are hereby ordered to obey and assist them 
in the execution of this order, and that they deliver the 
same, so taken, to the order of the Clothier General, or his 
Agent, with whom they are to correspond in the discharge of 
this business." Official record of this is found in volume 
5, page 69, Pennsylvania Archives.
 
 For General Brooke's Revolutionary services, he was granted 
by congress several grants of land in Bedford county, 
Pennsylvania, as follows: 400 acres, surveyed Feb. 4th, 
1785, 100 acres, surveyed Jan. 24, 1783 and 200 acres, 
surveyed June 11, of the same year.

  At his home in Haverford, General Brooke possessed as an 
heirloom a splendid mahogany chest of drawers, known as a 
high boy, and it was during one of the raids, when his house 
was plundered, that the top drawer was forced open with a 
bayonet in the hands of a Hessian soldier, in the belief 
that said chest contained treasure. This chest of drawers 
remained in his possession until his death in 1829, when it 
passed into the possession of his son Thomas Brooke, who was 
the father of Mrs. Buckman, and then in turn it passed to 
his son, George Brooke, Esq., of Delaware county, 
Pennsylvania, and at his death some few years ago it was 
bought at public sale. The purchaser in turn delivered it to 
Benjamin Brooke, from whom it went to Mr. Francis M. Brooke, 
who represented another branch of the family, and is still 
in the possession of his heirs. An old "grandfather's clock" 
from which the leads have been taken to make into bullets, 
was also sold at the same time as the chest of drawers, and 
is now in the possession of Mr. George Brooke Lindsay, of 
Chester, Pennsylvania, a lineal descendant of General 
William Brooke.

  After the Revolution was over, General Brooke returned 
quietly to his plantation in Haverford to pursue the more 
peaceful avocation of farming, surrounded by his numerous 
family, until the depredations of the British navy on our 
merchant ships on the high seas made it necessary that we 
should once more lay aside the ploughshare for the sword, as 
the country was once more destined to go to war with 
England. Among the first to offer their services was General 
Brooke, who was promptly commissioned a brigadier-general of 
the Third Division of Militia, with headquarters at Chester, 
where the troops soon assembled, and made every preparation 
to defend the shores of the Delaware against an anticipated 
invasion by the British.

  General Brooke's remaining years were spent at the old 
homestead in Haverford, which he had built and lived in for 
many years prior to the Revolution, and was located at the 
junction of Darby and Ithan creeks, in Chester county, and 
the old house is still standing, though it has long since 
passed out of the family and is fast going to ruin. His 
death occurred in 1829, at a ripe old age, and he was buried 
beside his wife, who had preceded him a number of years 
before, at Old St. David's church at Radnor, one of the most 
historic and interesting Episcopal churches in this country, 
and where he had been married on June 5, 1770, to Margaret 
Moore, who came of a family long settled in that 
neighborhood. Here also are buried besides General Brooke 
and his wife, among other children, his eldest daughter, 
Elizabeth, and her husband George Weed, and with this old 
church General Brooke had been identified nearly all his 
life, having served as a vestryman for many years.

  The Brooke family history has been written up by Mr. Frank 
Brooke Evans, of Philadelphia, and shows a connected history 
from the coming of the emigrant in 1698 from Huddersfield, 
England, where the family had been settled since 1534, 
several of the children of the emigrant having remained in 
the old country and leaving numerous descendants.


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