| Notes |
- AUTOBIOGRAPHY, when it exists, usually furnishes the most interesting and reliable information of at least the early life of any man. Among the papers of Mr. Buchanan, there remains a fragment of an autobiography, without date, written however, it is supposed, many years before his death. This sketch for it is only a sketch, ends with the year 1816, when he was at the age of twenty-five. I shall quote from it, in connection with the events of this part of his life, adding such further elucidations of its text as the other materials within my reach enable me to give.
The following is the account which Mr. Buchanan gives of his birth and parentage:
“My father, James Buchanan, was a native of the county Donegal, in the kingdom of Ireland. His family was respectable; but their pecuniary circumstances were limited. He emigrated to the United States before the date of the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain; having sailed from_______in the brig Providence, bound for Philadelphia, in 1783. He was then in the twenty-second year of his age. Immediately after his arrival in Philadelphia, he proceeded to the house of his maternal uncle, Mr. Joshua Russel, in York county. After spending a short time there, he became an assistant in the store of Mr. John Tom, at Stony Batter, a country place at the foot of the North Mountain, then in Cumberland (now in Franklin county.)
He commenced business for himself, at the same place, about the beginning of the year 1788; and on the 16th of April, in the same year, was married to Elizabeth Speer. My father was a man of practical judgment, and of great industry and perseverance. He had received a good English education, and had that kind of knowledge of mankind which prevented him from being ever deceived in his business. With these qualifications, with the facility of obtaining goods on credit at Baltimore at that early period, and with the advantages of his position, it being one of a very few spots where the people of the western counties came with pack horses loaded with wheat to purchase and carry home salt and other necessaries, his circumstances soon improved. He bought the Dunwoodie farm for £1500 in 1794, and had previously purchased the property on which he resided at the Cove Gap.
I was born at this place on the 23d of April, 1791, being my father's second child. My father moved from the Cove Gap to Mercersburg, a distance of between three and four miles, in the autumn of 1796, and began business in Mercersburg in the autumn of 1798. For some years before his death, which occurred on the 11th of June, 1821, he had quite a large mercantile business, and devoted much of his time and attention to superintending his farm, of which he was very fond. He was a man of great native force of character. He was not only respected, but beloved by everybody who approached him. In his youth, he held the commission of a justice of the peace; but finding himself so overrun with the business of this office as to interfere with his private affairs, he resigned his commission. A short time before his death, he again received a commission of the peace from Governor Hiester. He was a kind father, a sincere friend, and an honest and religious man.
My mother, considering her limited opportunities in early life, was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a country farmer, engaged in household employment from early life until after my father's death, she yet found time to read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read. She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and Thomson. I do not think, at least until a late period of her life, she had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and yet such was the correctness of her natural taste that she had selected for herself, and could repeat every passage in them which has been admired.
She was a sincere and devoted Christian from the time of my earliest recollection, and had read much on the subject of theology; and what she read once, she remembered forever. For her sons, as they successively grew up, she was a delightful and instructive companion. She would argue with them, and often gain the victory; ridicule them in any folly or eccentricity; excite their ambition, by presenting to them in glowing colors men who had been useful to their country or their kind, as objects of imitation, and enter into all their joys and sorrows. Her early habits of laborious industry, she could not be induced to forego– whilst she had anything to do. My father did everything he could to prevent her from laboring in her domestic concerns, but it was all in vain. I have often during the vacations at school or college, sat in the room with her, and whilst she was (entirely from her own choice) busily engaged in homely domestic employments, have spent hours pleasantly and instructively in conversing with her. She was a woman of great firmness of character and bore the afflictions of her later life with Christian philosophy. After my father's death, she lost her two sons, William and George Washington, two young men of great promise, and a favorite daughter. These afflictions withdrew her affections gradually more and more from the things of this world–and she died on the 14th of May, 1833, at Greensburg, in the calm but firm assurance that she was going home to her Father and her God. It was chiefly to her influence that her sons were indebted for a liberal education. Under Providence, I attribute any little distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a mother.”
The parents of Mr. Buchanan were both of Scotch-Irish descent, and Presbyterians. At what time this branch of the Buchanan family emigrated from Scotland to Ireland is not known; but John Buchanan, the grandfather of the President, who was a farmer in the county of Donegal in Ireland, married Jane Russel, about the middle of the last century. She was a daughter of Samuel Russel, who was also a farmer of Scotch-Presbyterian descent in the same county. James Buchanan, their son, and father of the President, was brought up by his mother's relatives. Elizabeth Speer, the President's mother, was the only daughter of James Speer, who was also of Scotch-Presbyterian ancestry, and who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1756. James Speer and his wife (Mary Patterson) settled at on a farm ten miles from Lancaster, and afterwards at the of the South Mountain between Chambersburg and Gettysburg. It is told in some memoranda which now lie before me. that in 1779, James Speer left the “Covenanted Church,” on account of difficulties with Mr. Dobbins, his pastor, and was afterwards admitted to full communion in the Presbyterian congregation under the care of the Rev. John Black. This incident sufficiently indicates the kind of religious atmosphere in which Mrs. Buchanan grew up; and the letters of both parents to their son, from which I shall have occasion to quote frequently afford abundant evidence of that deep and peculiar piety which characterized the sincere Christians of their denomination. They were married on the 16th of April, 1788, when Mrs. Buchanan was just twenty-one, and her husband twenty-seven. Eleven children were born to them between 1789 and 1811. James, the future President, was born April 23d, 1791.
source: Curtis, George Ticknor. Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States, Volume 1. New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1883.
- JAMES BUCHANAN, the fifteenth President of the United States, was born near Mercersburg, in Franklin County, Pa., April 23, 1791. He was a son of James Buchanan and Elizabeth Speer. James Buchanan the elder was a native of County Donegal, Ireland, and emigrated to America in 1783, settling in Franklin County. About 1798 the family removed to the village of Mercersburg. Here young Buchanan attended school, and laid the foundation of an education which in after-years carried him to an eminence he then little dreamed of. He entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in 1805, and graduated with high honors in 1809. After studying law in the office of James Hopkins, at Lancaster, for three years, he was admitted to the bar in 1812. While at college he gave evidence of a remarkable mind, and he had been admitted to the bar but a little time when his talent and learning placed him in a prominent position and inducted him into a lucrative practice. In 1812 he enlisted in the service of the republic in the war with Great Britain, serving in the company of Capt. Henry Shippen. He was elected to the State Legislature in 1814 serving in the lower house and re elected in 1815 He was elected to Congress from his district in 1820. In politics he was at first a Federalist, but in 1828 he became a Democrat, and supported Gen. Jackson for the Presidency. He served almost continuously as a Congressman from 1820 till 1831, when he retired voluntarily and was appointed by President Jackson as Minister to Russia. He negotiated and concluded the first commercial treaty between the United States and Russia, opening the latter's ports to our commerce. He returned to the United States in 1833, and was made senator from his native State, serving from 1834 to 1845. He was appointed Secretary of State by James K. Polk in 1845, and filled that important position till 1849. After a retirement of four years he was appointed Minister to the Court of St. James in 1853. In 1856 he was nominated on the Democratic ticket for President in opposition to John C. Fremont, Republican, and Millard Fillmore, American. Mr. Buchanan was elected, receiving one hundred and seventy-four electoral votes, and was inaugurated March 4, 1857. Though from a State in which no slavery existed, Mr. Buchanan was hostile to those who opposed its extension, and was also an extreme advocate of the sovereignty of individual States. In a message to Congress in December, 1860, he blamed the people of the North for the disruption of the Union, and affirmed that the Executive had no power or right to prevent the secession of a State. The principal events of his legislative career were his advocacy of the recognition of the independence of Texas, and afterwards his support at the time of its admittance as a State; his service as chairman of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Relations; his advocacy of the “Sub-Treasury Act;” his opposition to the Fiscal Bank bill and support of an independent treasury. In 1861 he retired to his residence at Wheatland, and resided there until his death. In 1866 he published “Mr. Buchanan's Administration,” a book designed to defend the acts of his administration as President. His course as the President of the United States, while condemned by the great majority of the people of the Northern States, was evidently directed by his views upon the questions at issue, and in the light of future revelations will probably be reviewed with less severe judgment. He died at Wheatland, June 1, 1868.
source: Ellis, Franklin and Samuel Evans. History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Philadelphia, PA: Everts and Peck, 1883.
- James Buchanan, fifteenth President of the United States of America, died s.p.
source: Smith, John Guthrie. Strathendrick and its Inhabitants from Early Times: An Account of the Parishes of Fintry, Balfron, Killearn, Drymen, Buchanan, and Kilmaronock. Glasgow, UK: James Maclehose and Sons, 1896.
- A second American stock, representative of the Carbeth lords, descends from George of Munster, is located at Louisville, Ky., and was, in 1857, represented by two brothers, George and Andrew; while from Thomas of Donegal was descended the late President of the United States, James Buchanan; a namesake, James Buchanan, recently British Consul at the port of New York, was descended from John of Tyrone. Belonging to this branch also are the Buchanans of Northern New York; Thomas, who married a kinswoman, a Livingstone; their son George, who was the father of the well-known authoress, Mrs. Gildersleeve Longstreet, of New York city.
source: Buchanan, Arthur William Patrick. The Buchanan Book: The Life of Alexander Buchanan, Q.C., of Montreal, Followed by an Account of the Family of Buchanan. Montreal, Canada: privately printed, 1911.
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1791 - 1868 (77 years)
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