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BUCKNER Vol. 3, p. 1241-1242 Book has photo A resident of the City of McAlester, Pittsburg County, and representative of the Twenty-fifth senatorial district of the state in the Oklahoma Legislature, Senator Buckner served with marked ability in the fifth general assembly of the legislature and here, as in all other relations of life, he fully upheld the prestige of a name that has been specially distinguished and honored in connection with the history of what is now the vigorous young commonwealth of Oklahoma. Senator Buckner was born at Eufaula, in the Creek Nation reservation of the Indian Territory, and the date of his nativity was December 18, 1881. He is a son of Rev. Henry F. and Mollie (VANDIVERE) Buckner, whose lives were marked by consecrated service in the missionary field among the Indians of Indian Territory, the latter having been a daughter of Almerine Vandivere, who was a native of Georgia and who was for several years a missionary among the Creek Indians. Rev. Henry F. Buckner, a clergyman of the Baptist Church, came from Pulaski County, Kentucky, in 1848, as one of the earliest Christian missionaries among the Creek Indians, his self-abnegating and arduous service as a missionary having continued forty-two years and up to the time of his death, which occurred in 1883, his wife having survived him and having been summoned to the life eternal in the same year. Aside from the subject of this review they are survived also by three other children---Helm F., who is an executive with a street- railway company at Bakersfield, California; Sumner J., who is an employee of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester; and Mrs. John W. REYNOLDS, of Hood River, Oregon. Upon coming to the frontier of civilization in the pioneer days Rev. Henry F. Buckner was first stationed at the old Creek Indian Agency, near Muskogee, where he remained until the outbreak of the Civil war when, with members of the Creek tribe, he found refuge in Texas. After the close of the war a delegation from the Creek Nation went to the Lone Star State and urged him to return to Indian Territory, so strong a hold had he gained upon the confidence and affection of the tribe, of which he was elected a member after his return from Texas, this noteworthy distinction having been accorded him in 186. Later he established a college at Witcherville, Arkansas, and the institution bore his name. He was a man of high scholastic attainments, made a close and exhaustive study of the Creek language, and in addition to compiling and publishing a grammar in the Creek tongue he also translated into the same language a large portion of the Bible, and translated into English many of the tribal songs of the Creeks. His brother, Robert C. Buckner, was the founder of the Buckner Orphans Home in the City of Dallas, Texas. The name and memory of Rev. Henry F. Buckner merit enduring place in the history of Oklahoma and to them perpetual honor should be paid, for his life was one of consecrated zeal and devotion and he endured the full tension of hardships and vicissitudes in his long and noble service as a missionary among the Indians, his labors constituting an important chapter in the history of the Five Civilized Tribes. Senator Williams V. Buckner was not yet three years old at the time of the death of his father and he was reared under the conditions that obtained in the Indian Territory at a time when there was little of fortuitous influence to enable him to make progress such as was common to the youth of the average state of the Union. There he obtained, however, a good common-school education, including a course in the high school of Eufaula, where he thus continued his studies until he was fourteen years old. Thereafter he took a course of higher academic order in Bacon University, at Muskogee, Oklahoma, and attended for two years Ouachita College, at Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Prior to completing his college studies he had engaged in teaching when seventeen years of age, and it was likewise at this time that he tendered his services as a soldier in the Spanish-American war. He enlisted in a regiment of picked men from Oklahoma Territory, Indian Territory, and the territories of Arizona and New Mexico, this having been known as the First Territorial Regiment of Volunteer Infantry and having been commanded by Colonel MCCORD. As a member of Company D, Senator Buckner continued in service eight months, but his regiment was not called to the stage of active military operations in Cuba. He is at the time of this writing, in 1915, commander of William C. Smith Camp, No 12, Spanish-American War Veterans at McAlester. After the close of his military career Senator Buckner continued his efficient services in the pedagogic profession, as a representative of which he taught in the Government schools maintained for the Indians and later in the public schools, after the admission of Oklahoma to statehood. In the meanwhile he had established his residence at McAlester and during the entire period of Oklahoma History under the state regime he has been actively identified with political affairs, as a leader in the ranks of the democratic party contingent the Pittsburg County, where he is a valued member of the Democratic Club of the county. Senator Buckner continued his activities as a teacher in the public schools until 1912, when he was elected clerk of the Superior Court of Pittsburg County, an office of which he continued the incumbent until 1914, in the autumn of which year he was elected to the State Senate, as representative of the twenty-fifth Senatorial District. Prior to this he has served as a clerk in the lower house during the second general assembly of the State Legislature; in 1908 was a special land appraiser in the employ of the state board of public land commissioners; and for a time was an assistant in the office of chief mine inspector of the state, at McAlester. As a member of the Senate in the Fifth Legislature, that of 1915, Senator Buckner was chairman of the committee on penal institutions and held membership also on the committee on mines and manufacturing, the committee on ways and means, and those on roads and highways, fees and salaries, education, and commerce and labor. Bu the democratic caucus of the Legislature he was made a member of the so called steering committee, and he was zealous and influential in the work on the floor of the Senate and in the deliberations of the committees to which he was assigned. He introduced the Senate bill for the regulation of divorces in the state, with a provision prohibiting a marriage of divorced persons within six months after the granting of divorce. He was one of the authors of the rural- credits bill, probably the most far-reaching and popular measure that came before the Fifth Legislature. The senator also introduced measures relating to the employment of convicts in the penal institutions of the state, and made the proposition that the state purchase an immense cement plant at McAlester, for the purpose of employing convicts in the state penitentiary in the operation of the manufactory, the products of which should be used principally in the building of public highways. Senator Buckner and his wife are members of the Baptist Church and at McAlester he is affiliated not only with the camp of the Spanish- American Veterans, but also with the Knights of Pythias. At Enterprise, Indian Territory, in the year 1904, was solemnized the marriage of Senator Buckner to Miss Ida ERVIN, who likewise had been a successful and popular teacher in the public schools of the territory., The three children of this union are Ruth Hallie, Ruby May, and Wilson Ervin. Typed for OKGenWeb by Charmaine Keith, November 10, 1998.