Mr. Buchanan was born, Sept. 13, 1832. He grew up amid the quiet pursuits of rural life, attending the common school in a log school house, and at the early age of eighteen years on account of the death of his father, assumed the management of the place. His life passed in an uneventful manner until 1853, when he set out for California. He arrived at his destination after six months and thirteen days, and then engaged in making posts and shingles in Tuolumne County, for one year. Afterward he occupied himself as a teamster until the spring of 1855. He then started homeward by the Panama route and in due time arrived in Scott County and purchased eighty acres of the present homestead. Here he has made all the improvements and in due time added fifty-five acres, nearly the whole of which he has brought to a state of cultivation, and which is watered by the Mauvaisterre Creek. He has good fences, a grove and an orchard, and in addition to general farming makes a specialty of blooded Short-horn cattle and Poland-China swine. He usually keeps about ten head of horses and uses three teams about the farm.

One of the most important events in the life of our subject was his marriage with Miss Mary Creal which took place in Exeter, Scott County, 1857. Mrs. Buchanan was born in Green County, Ky., 1842, and of her union with our subject there are seven children, namely: Thomas, Jeremiah, Lucian, Virgil, Clayton, Maggie and Florence, Jeremiah and Clayton are carrying on a barber shop at Orange, Texas; the other children are at home with their parents. Mr. Buchanan was elected to his present office on the Democratic ticket in the fall of 1886. Prior to this he had served as Justice of Peace for a period of nineteen years, and most of this time has been a member of the School Board of his district. He has also officiated as Road Supervisor and on the Grand and Petit juries. He wields considerably influence in party politics, and socially, belongs to the Masonic fraternity at Exeter.

Jeremiah Buchanan, the father of our subject, was a native of Tennessee, as likewise was the paternal grandfather. The latter served in the War of 1812. Jeremiah Buchanan came to Illinois during the twenties, and was one of the first settlers to enter land in township 15, range 13. He secured eighty acres where he engaged in farming, and in the meantime had a hand in the Black Hawk War. He died of cholera in 1833. The mother, Mrs. Elizabeth (Coonrod) Buchanan, was born in Virginia, and passed away after the decease of her husband. Grandfather Coonrod was a native of Germany and upon his emigration to America, located in Virginia, but later removed to Ohio and finally came to Scott County, locating in township 15, range 13, north of the bluffs. There he carried on farming until his death. The mother of our subject, remained at the old homestead until her death in 1877, at the age of sixty years. The parental household included five children - Sally A., Isabelle, Ellen; Jeremiah C., our subject, and James M. Jeremiah C., is the only survivor of the family. James M. during the Civil War served as a soldier about one year, and was then obliged to return home where he died three days later.