Buckleys

John Buckley. Origin: Loyalist.

The Royal Gazette of 23 Feb. 1814 announced the death on Long Island of John Buckley, Sr. a native of Staffordshire, England. It states that he was a staunch loyalist in the American rebellion, and among the first to emigrate to the Bahamas from East Florida, after that colony reverted to the Crown of Spain.

In an ad he placed in the Bahamas Gazette in 1789, he described himself as a tailor and habit maker who had an assortment of broadcloth from London for sale at his shop in Frederick Street (“opposite Captain Farr’s”).

In Oct. 1790, he informed his friends that he had removed himself to Long Island for three months. He had received a grant on Long Island of 220 acres near Deadman's Cay. The land was bounded by vacant land, the sea, and land granted to Marmaduke Wright.

Under a brief description of Thomas Allen in the 1783 Spanish Census of St. Augustine, FL, Thomas’s wife Catherine swore that she had first been married to John Buckley but, according to her sworn testimony, he “left her.” John Buckley then took out a license to marry Elizabeth Green on 26 June 1795.

During our research, we also located a second land grant given to John Buckley of 220 acres on Long Island on 29 March 1786, in what is the current settlement of Buckley’s. Buckley’s settlement adjoins Deadman’s Cay, and perhaps the earlier grant was rewritten in 1788, after the Crown had purchased the Bahamas from the Lord Proprietors in 1787.

References: Parrish, LSC, HB