Working Landscapes: Buckland
Visited by Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Lafayette and Lee, the town of Buckland remains a living relic of an early Virginia mill town.
According to Carter Hudgins, Chair, Department of History and American Studies at Mary Washington College,
There is no place quite like Buckland. That is not because there were not places like it. There were scores, but they were long ago overwhelmed by neglect or growth and, as a result, Buckland is a unique portal into a time.that gave shape to...America 's singular capacity for entrepreneurial success. The wealth of surviving material could and should become the center for an important re-evaluation of how Virginia and how by extension, the new nation embraced and shaped a future made possible by Republican Government...
Early American towns were centered on commerce. Buckland and other rural Virginia towns represented the earliest capitalistic American landscape.
History
The town of Buckland, Virginia stands on land that was once part of the Broad Run Tract owned by the 6th Lord Fairfax, who then conveyed the land to the Robert (King) Carter family. Carter's sons conveyed the land to Samuel Love in 1774. Love and his four sons transformed the property into a vibrant mercantile center. In 1775, Samuel Love petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to re-direct the Old Carolina Road to access the growing number of shops. Outside merchants arrived, and leased adjoining parcels or built shops of their own. Shops include a distillery, a wheelwright, two taverns, blacksmith, tannery, mill, an apothecary, saddle maker, cooper, woolen factory, as well as a church. By the end of the 18th century Buckland was a sustainable small town.
John Love inherited the main house from his father in 1787 and, along with his brothers, farmed the land on an extensive scale. They bred horses, operated a stone quarry, and experimented with several varieties of wheat for grinding in their mills. They also started importing Arabian and European horses, making Buckland one of the first large scale breeding farms in Virginia. In 1787, the Loves sold a horse to General George Washington, and, in 1799, provided horses for the US Army under James McHenry, Secretary of War.
In 1797, by petition to the Virginia General Assembly, John Love laid out