BUCKINGHAM, Catharinus Putnam, soldier, b. in Springfield, Ohio, 14 March, 1808; d. in Chicago, 30 Aug., 1888. He was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1829, and served as second lieutenant in the 3d artillery on topographical duty till 19 Aug., 1830, and as assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy at West Point till 28 Aug., 1831. He resigned from the army, 30 Sept., 1831, and from 1833 till 1836 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Kenyon college, Ohio. From 1849 till 1861 he was proprietor of the Kokosing iron works, Knox co., Ohio. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general of Ohio on 3 May, 1861, commissary-general on 8 May, and adjutant-general on 1 July, 1861, serving until 2 April, 1862. He became brigadier-general of volunteers, 16 July, 1862, and served on special duty in the war department at Washington till 11 Feb., 1863, when he resigned, and became a merchant in New York city. From 1868 till 1873 he was occupied in building the Illinois central grain elevators at Chicago, and rebuilding them after their destruction by the great fire. From 1873 till his death he was president of the Chicago steel works.
BUCKINGHAM, James Silk, English traveller, b. in Flushing, near Falmouth, England, in
1786; d. in London, 30 June, 1855. He was intended for the church, but preferred a career of adventure. Before he reached his thirtieth year he had been sailor, bookseller's clerk, law student, printer, and captain of a West-Indiaman, and had three times lost all his property. In 1813 he was
engaged by the pacha of Egypt to determine the
best site for a canal across the isthmus of Suez.
After being stripped by robbers, he reached Suez,
but the pacha gave up his design and sent Buckingham to India, where he took command of a ship
belonging to the sultan of Muscat. He was expelled from India because he had no license from the East India company; but, after returning to Egypt and travelling through the east disguised as a Mameluke, he was given leave to reside at Calcutta, and established there, in 1816, the "Calcutta Journal." Offending the government by his strictures, he was again expelled, and his press seized.
He thus lost his property a fourth time. He then
returned to London and established the " Oriental
Herald" and the "Athenæum." Between 1822
and 1830 he published his "Travels in Palestine," "Travels in Arabia," "Travels in Mesopotamia," and " Travels in Assyria and Media," and subsequently two volumes on Belgium, the Rhine, and Switzerland, and two on France, Piedmont, and
Switzerland. He lectured throughout the United
Kingdom in support of various reforms, and from
1832 till 1837 was member of parliament for Sheffield. After this he travelled extensively in America, lecturing on temperance and anti-slavery. He published his travels in ten octavo volumes, three being devoted to the northern United States, three to the slave states, three to the eastern and western states, and one to Canada, Nova Scotia, and
New Brunswick (London, 1841-3). In 1849 he published a volume on " National Evils and Practical Remedies," in 1851 became president of the London temperance league, and published the first two volumes of his autobiography (1855), but died before the work was finished.
BUCKINGHAM, Joseph Tinker, journalist, b. in Windham, Conn., 21 Dec, 1779; d. in Cambridge, Mass., 11 April, 1861. His father's name
was Nehemiah Tinker; but Joseph, when twenty-seven years old, was authorized by the Massachusetts legislature to take his mother's name of Buckingham. Nehemiah Tinker died in 1783, leaving his widow and ten children so destitute that they were supported during one winter by the
town authorities. They then removed to Worthington, Mass., where Joseph was apprenticed to a farmer, and acquired a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the age of sixteen he entered a printing-office at Walpole, N. H., and a
few months later became a printer in the office of
the Greenfield, Mass., " Gazette." He removed to
Boston in 1800, and in 1803 filled the office of
prompter to a company of comedians. He
founded the "Polyanthus," a monthly magazine, in 1806, but discontinued it in September, 1807, and published a weekly, called the "Ordeal," in 1809, but it ran only six months. The "Polyanthus " was revived in 1812, and continued through six volumes. From 1817 till 1828, in company with Samuel L. Knapp, he published the "New
England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine," which
sided with the federalists in politics. In 1828 he
sold the "Galaxy" that he might give his whole
attention to the Boston " Courier," which he had
begun to publish in 1824. He continued to edit
this till 1848, and from 1831 till 1834 published,
with his son Edwin, the "New England Magazine." In this magazine Dr. Holmes published one or two articles under the title of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," which became famous when he resumed it twenty-five years later
for a series in the "Atlantic Monthly." Mr. Buckingham was frequently elected to the lower house of the legislature, and in 1847 and 1850 served in the state senate. Among other public services, he made a report in favor of the suppression of lotteries. He was president of the Massachusetts charitable association, of the Bunker Hill monument association, and of the Middlesex agricultural society. After retiring from the press he published "Specimens of Newspaper Literature, with Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences" (2 vols., Boston, 1850); "Personal Memoirs and Recollections of Editorial Life " (2 vols., 1852); and "Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable
Mechanics' Association" (1853).—His son, Edwin,
associated with him in the publication of the "New
England Magazine," died at sea, on a voyage to
Smyrna, in 1833, aged twenty-three years.
BUCKINGHAM, William Alfred, governor of Connecticut, b. in Lebanon, Conn., 28 May, 1804; d. in Norwich. Conn., 3 Feb., 1875. He was educated in the public schools, and spent his boyhood on his father's farm. When twenty-one years old he removed to Norwich, and was for many years a successful merchant and manufacturer there. He was mayor of the city in 1849, 1850, 1856, and 1857, and was elected governor of the state every year from 1858 till 1866, when he refused a renomination. In 1860 the result of the election in Connecticut was awaited with interest by the whole country, and the defeat of ex-Gov. Thomas PI. Seymour, the democratic candidate, by Gov. Buckingham, was regarded by the southern leaders as an indication of the general feeling at the north. During the war Gov. Buckingham co-operated promptly with the president, and was untiring in his efforts to sustain the national government. He was one of the governors on whom Mr. Lincoln especially leaned. The number of troops he raised was prodigious for the population of the state, then only 461,000. Connecticut never suffered a draft, and sent into the field nearly 55,000 men—6,000 more than her quota. This was due largely to Gov. Buckingham's efforts. Although known as the "war governor of Connecticut," he was by nature and training a civilian.
