BUCKMAN’S OF MARYLAND
Excerpts from “The Buckman Family of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, U.S.A.
by Sister Mary Louise Donnelly
The story of the BUCKMAN FAMILY is a part of the history of those Catholic families of St. Mary's County, Maryland who took roots in the New World in the seventeenth century, suffered religious persecution in the eighteenth century, and moved west in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
King Charles I of England gave land in the New World to George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore, who planned the colony of Maryland. Except for the years of the Puritan upheaval, the vision of George Calvert and Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, of Protestants and Catholics living in peaceful communion in a small corner of the New World became a reality in Maryland. From 1634 until about 1689 Catholics practiced their religion freely and played a predominant role in the government of the colony.
With the death in 1715 of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, Catholics lost all civil power in Maryland. Three years later Catholics were not allowed to vote for delegates of their localities. Thirty years later the land of Catholics was subject to double taxation.
The American Revolution ended religious persecution and opened fresh opportunities for Catholics in Maryland. Ironically, it was at this time that many Catholics made plans to leave Maryland and settle in Kentucky County, Virginia, in an area which in 1792 became the State of Kentucky. The desire to start a Catholic colony, the poverty caused by the Revolutionary War, hopeful tales of the Kentucky frontier, a spirit of adventure, or the scarcity of land in Maryland for their heirs, were single or collective factors for the movement.
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