I21870: William BERNARD (6 Sep 1730

Notes

Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, Volume I, IV--Burgesses and Other Prominent Persons: William Bernard, was a son of Richard Bernard, of St. Paul's parish, Stafford county, and grandson of the immigrant, Richard Bernard, of Buckinghamshire, England; was born Sept. 6, 1730, and practiced law in Westmoreland county. He was an attorney-at-law and President Monroe studied law in his office. He married Winifred Thornton, daughter of Anthony Thornton and Winifred, his wife, daughter of Col. Peter Presley. William Bernard's will was proved in King George county May 1, 1783.

Notes

A History of Muhlenberg County XVI, The Story of the Stack: "the discovery of the extensive deposits of surface iron ore in southern Muhlenberg County prompted Aylette H. Buckner (the father of General Buckner) and Cadwalader Churchill to organize a company for the purpose of working this ore. In 1837 they erected a furnace near the junction of Pond Greek and Salt Lick Creek, five miles south of Greenville, and before the close of the following year the iron works were put in operation. The Stack was built at the foot of a hill, and a level gangway was placed from the top of the hill to the top of the furnace, where there was a charging platform over the opening through which the ore was fed. The Stack was a double wall of local sandstone, hooped with six iron bands, the whole forming one massive tower about eighty feet-high, forty feet wide at the base, and twenty-five feet across at the top.

Alfred Johnson, Garland Craig, and Thomas Welborn, Muhlenberg's best stone-masons, with the help of others, did the stone work. They must have been masters of their craft, for in spite of the fact that some of the iron bands were removed about the year 1875 and that twenty years later two vandals dynamited it for the purpose of taking the heavy iron bars used to support the four arches, the walls stood for seventy years. It was the irreparable damage done by the two old-iron gatherers that, on January 14, 1907, caused the final collapse of the old landmark, which is now nothing more than a heap of dressed rock.

The Stack and its wooden gangway were by no means the only struetures erected by Buckner and Churchill. They also put up a substantial two-story log house of ten rooms, used as a residence, office, and store by the Buckners. It is said that three yoke of oxen were required to transfer Buckner's private library from Hart County to this place. The Buckner house was the largest structure of its kind in the county. It was about one hundred and fifty feet long, constructed of hewed logs, had good glass windows, and floors of sawed lumber. There were three large chimneys and a dozen open fire-places. The building contained a spacious dining room, used by some of the white employes. In an adjoining room, known as "the store," goods were kept for the convenience of the people connected with the Furnace and for the purpose of exchanging merchandise with farmers for produce. Opposite the south end of the log house, and built in the hillside, was the stone milk-house, through which there constantly ran a stream of spring water.

Not far from The Stack stood a grist mill, to which corn was brought by the farmers, who gave one sixth of their meal for the grinding. This mill, used later as a tobacco barn by Ben Mitchell and others, was burned to the ground about 1870, with a large crop of Yellow Pryor in it. Many of the white miners and wood-choppers and the forty slaves occupied log cabins north of The Stack, but all traces of their quarters have now disappeared. In fact the large pile of rock that now marks the site of the Furnace, a few pieces of slag, the ruins of the milk-house, two half-buried corn burrs, two half-filled wells, and a few small mounds where chimneys once stood--all more or less hidden in a jungle of bushes or second-growth timber--are the only evidences of the great work that flourished around The Stack a few years before and after 1840.Ruins of the Buckner Milk-House.

Colonel Aylette Hartswell Buckner, the father of General Buckner, was a son of Philips Buckner. He was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1792, and came to Kentucky in 1803 with his parents, who settled in Hart County. A. H. Buckner was in his twenty-first year when, in 1813, he enlisted in Colonel James Simrall's regiment. He was present during the siege of Fort Meigs and also took part in the battle of the Thames. Like his friend Charles Fox Wing, he was always greatly interested in the soldiers of the War of 1812. In his day he was one of the best-known men in the State. About the year 1832 he built the Henry Clay furnace in Hart County, and about five years later left Hart County for Muhlenberg, where he erected the Buckner Furnace, or The Stack. As early as 1832 he prophesied that within a hundred years every county in the State would be reached by lines of railroad and that people then would travel in iron cars and sleep in beds at night while traveling, and that iron would in many things take the place of wood. During his four years' stay in Muhlenberg he did much toward the advancement of the county's interests. In 1842, when The Stack was abandoned, he moved to his plantation at Beechland, near Camden, Arkansas, where he died in 1852."

Children:
2 Turner H. BUCKNER b: 5 Sep 1820 d: 5 Jun 1854
2 Emily Morehead BUCKNER b: 22 Oct 1822 d: 1 Mar 1827
2 Simon Bolivar BUCKNER b: 1 Apr 1823 + Mary KINGSBURY + Delia CLAIBORNE
2 Caroline Jane BUCKNER b: 26 Dec 1824
2 Morelos Aylett BUCKNER b: 7 Jul 1826 d: 16 Sep 1828
2 Mary Elizabeth BUCKNER b: 27 Jun 1832 d: 3 Oct 1883 + John A. TOOKE
2 Aylett HARTSWELL b: 12 May 1833 d: Bef 1835
2 Aylett Hartswell BUCKNER b: 10 Sep 1835 d: 14 Mar 1838
2 Morelos Aylett BUCKNER b: 27 Oct 1837 d: 13 Mar 1838

Notes

From : Joseph Gregory "The Centenarian" (1742-1842) Mecklenburg Co., VA to Rutherford Co., TN by Josephine Gregory Spears..published 1990 by Gateway Press. Library of Congress Card Number 89-82751 Copyright 1990.

Marriage 1 Mary Magdalene HERNDON Most likely Joseph's first wife
Marriage 2 Alice DAVIS

Children:
2 Mary Polly GREGORY
2 Sarah GREGORY
2 John GREGORY
2 Bemjamin GREGORY
2 Wright GREGORY
2 Nancy GREGORY
2 Edward GREGORY + Frances SHELTON
2 Mildred GREGORY

Notes

xvii. LYDIA STARK, b. June 30, 1748, Overwharton Parish, Stafford County, VA.

My Southern Family

William BERNARD

6 Sep 1730 - 1782

ID Number: I21870

Notes

Sources

Col. Aylett Hartswell BUCKNER

13 Jan 1792 - 11 Dec 1851

ID Number: I65933

Notes

Sources

Paul CHILES

____ - ____

ID Number: I105044

Sources

Alton Eugene CONEY

Alzira Virginia GAINES

1844 - ____

ID Number: I94458

Sources

Joseph GREGORY

1738 - 1842

ID Number: I73170

Notes

Sources

Eleanor HARRISON

1788 - 1849

ID Number: I50395

Sources

James HURT

BEF 1701 - ____

ID Number: I11699

Sources

Mary MCCANTS

Dr. John Robert SLOAN

17 Feb 1871 - 14 Aug 1960

ID Number: I2035

Sources

Lydia STARK

30 Jun 1748 - ____

ID Number: I78537

Notes

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Daughter TINSLEY

ABT 1750 - ____

ID Number: I69254

Sources

Dora Earle WILLIAMS

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