Reminiscences of Jackson Buckner Written by Jackson Buckner August 8, 1891, at University Place (Lincoln) Nebraska Jackson Buckner was born, of American parents, November 15, 1820 in Chatham County, North Carolina. My mother's maiden name was Martha Lee. I had five sisters (Susannah b: 1815, Hannah b:1816, Lilly b:1817, Arena b:1818, & Jane b:1819), all older than I and one brother (John Farrington b: May 12,1822.) who was younger. My father (Nathaniel) died in the spring of 1824. We all remained at home, some of the girls had to work out some after father's death, but they made their home with mother. In the spring of 1829, mother married a very poor man by the name of Stephen Johnson. My youngest sister, brother and I remained home until the fall of 1832. I was then twelve years old and went to work for a wealthy Quaker, who lived in the neighborhood. I worked for him about four weeks. While working for him the old gentleman gave me a word of advise that has been very helpful to me all through life. He said to me one day. "Jackson, if thee wants to get along well, thee must always keep on the right side of the women folks". I don't know as he ever thought of it again, but I have never forgotten it. It was on this man's farm, Jacob Hadley, that I saw the first improvement in farming implements. While I lived at home we went to there to mill. When I was 10 years old, I and my cousin about the same age, were going to the mill on horseback and when we got to Mr Hadley's farm, before we reached the mill, we found a little boy plowing near the road. He told us to get off and come and see his new plow and clevis. The plow was a very remarkable one; the beam was not straight and the mole-board was cast iron, what we called pot mettle then. The clevis had three notches and was so adjusted that he could regulate the depth of the plow by them. A very remarkable thing indeed. I think the mans name was Pehew that invented this plow and clevis. When I was through working for Mr. Hadley I went to live with my uncle, John Buckner, in the fall of 1932. My Uncle was a Baptist preacher, and all the Buckner family that I knew then were Baptist, that were Christians. I lived with my Uncle John four years and went to school about two months during that time.
I had gone to school some while living with mother. There were no public schools in that country then. Now while I was living with my Uncle there were several things took place, but I will only mention a few. The Methodist Episcopal's had a church about three miles from Uncle John's and they had a Sunday School there; so I got permission of Uncle and Aunt to attend that Sunday School a few times. My uncle was in fair circumstances and had no children. Once upon a time there were three Baptist preachers stayed all night with us and my uncle gave one of them fifty cents. In the fall of 1833, the people became very much alarmed; they thought the Judgement Day had come. It looked as though all the stars of the heavens were falling to the earth. After they got over their scare, they said it was comets in the air. On the twentieth of January, 1838, I thought I would go up to Guilford County and work awhile. It was about twenty-five miles west of my Mother's. I had never been away from home before, as you might say, or out of the neighborhood where I was born. I heard a story of a young man whose father lived twenty miles from Boston. When the young man was 21 years old he wanted to go to Boston. His father furnished him a horse and a saddle and he started on his journey. When he reached the city he said, " Well, if the world spreads out as far beyond Boston as it was between Boston and his father's, this was a big world. So I thought when I reached my destination in Guilford County. I thought I was a long way from my mother, brother and sisters, and so got very homesick. But I soon got weaned from home and became acquainted with my neighbors and liked my new location very well. I soon learned that I had not gone so far from home, but what I could go back and visit my kin folks once in a while. Distance then was much greater in the minds of the people than now. If a man made a trip of five or six hundred miles; when he returned everybody wanted to see him and hear of the journey; more so than the people of today desire to see a man who has been around the world. In the fall of 1839 I thought I would go to school some; So I signed a half scholar to a six months school which was six dollars per scholar. I went six days and quit. I had to pay my three dollars so it cost me fifty cents a day. But I have never seen the time that I would have taken one hundred dollars for what I learned in those six days and be without it. The reason I quit was because I did not know enough to go on.
In the spring of 1841 I planted a field of corn through which there ran a road that people traveled sometimes. So one day as I was going out to work in the field of corn I was traveling along this road and it happend I met a very nice looking young lady. I had seen her twice before, but had never had an introduction. I was at the camp-meeting in 1839 where she was converted and saw her there but did not form any acquaintance with her. I saw her once riding on horse back in the highway. So when I met her in the road of course I knew her face and spoke to her in as polite a manner as I knew how. She did not seem inclined to stop; but I began to ask her where she was stopping and she replied, "At my brother Joel's "(Pike). And then I must know how long she had been there and she said, "Only a short time". I then asked her how long she expected to stop with her brother. She gave me no definite answer to that question. I wanted to ask her how she would like to have my company at her brother's the next Sunday, but could not quite get up the courage to ask her that question, so we bid each other the time of day and passed on. When Sunday came it was Easter. I put on my best clothes and stated for Joel Pike's and soon arrived there. I received a very cordial welcome and spent one of the most pleasant Easter Sundays I have ever past. That was the first Sunday that I and Jemima Pike had spent together. And as well as we can remember we have spent Easter Sunday together each year since. We have been blessed with the privilege of enjoying each other's company for fifty years which has always seemed like an extra day to us. Time passed on very nicely from that Sunday till the 8th of August, 1841, and on that day we were married at Joel Pike's. Joel Pike had a tenant house on his farm, so we rented that and a part of the farm. We did not get possession of the house till about the first of January, 1842, when we moved to ourselves and set up housekeeping. I was quite proud about it; for my part I had nothing but a little which I had raised that year, buy my wife had enough that we could keep house with. It did not require so much for a young married couple to keep house with as it does now. A pot, an oven, a home made bed-stead, a bed and covering, a water pail, a tub, and a pot rack made of a rod of iron. they did not have any such thing as a wash board in those days. These made a good outfit for keeping house. I knew how to plow, to spit rails and my wife knew how to card and spin so we got along very nicely. On the third day of September 1842, God blessed our little home with a beautiful girl baby, and we called her Esper.
In November, 1842 we moved from Guilford to Chatham County. This was our first move after we had set up housekeeping. We moved in the house with my mother, until we built us a little house of our own on the old homestead and then moved in that. This was our second move. We now lived forty miles west of Raleigh, the capital of the state and one hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. In August, 1843 we concluded to make a trip to Raleigh. We had a good little horse and a good one horse wagon. So we fixed up and started. Now between where we lived and Raleigh there was a large river called Good Hope. When we reached this river it was out of its banks and all over the bottom, so we took up camp for the night. The next morning the water had gone down some, so we hitched up and started for the bridge' but when we got there the approach was gone. There were some men on the bridge and they came to our assistance. We unhitched the horse and jumped him over and then lifted the wagon upon the bridge, hitched up and went on to Raleigh. The Capitol is built of native granite and is a very nice building. After we had looked through the capitol a while we thought we would go down to the depot and see the railroad. They had just finished one from Raleigh to Pittsburg, a distance of one hundred miles. While we were at the depot a train pulled out. That was the first railroad we ever saw. In September 1843 there was to be a camp-meeting eight or ten miles from where we lived, held by the Methodist Protestant Church, and my wife wanted to go to that camp meeting. I was not much inclined to go but she insisted and I finally said,'all right, we will go." And at that meeting I was converted. Praise the Lord! Soon after I united with that branch of the church. About the first of March, 1844, I met a man who had lived in Missouri for eight years, and he said he liked it very much. This was the first man that I had seen or heard of that lived in Missouri. He had come back to North Carolina to move his mother and brother-in-law our of that state. When I heard him tell his story of Missouri I thought I would like to live in that state, but it was a long way from North Carolina. They called it one thousand miles from Raleigh to St. Louis, Missouri. It was six or eight miles from home where I met this man, so as I rode home I thought the matter over and concluded to speak to my wife about it and if she was willing we would make an effort to move to Missouri. When we were first married she wanted to move west but I was not inclined to do so. When I got home and presented the case to her, she was much pleased and said she thought that was just the thing to do. So we went to work preparing for the move and on the 20th of March, 1844 we had things in shape the best we could and got our Church letter. We bid farewell to dear friends and native land and started for Missouri in a one horse wagon. We came across the narrow stirp of
West Virginia, across the Alleghany Mountains, and then into East Tennessee, across the Cumberland Mountains, then into what was known as middle Tennessee. There turned north and came across Kentucky and crossed the Ohio River at Wilson's Cove. Thence through southern Illinois to St. Louis where we crossed the Mississippi River. We crossed the Missouri River at St. Charles and then traveled up what was called the Great Divide to Randolph County, seven miles north of Huntsville, the county seat and about two hundred miles north west of St. Louis. There on the sixth day of May 1844 we stopped and called it the end of our journey for the time being. That was our third move.