Archives » Collections » Bucktrout » Richard Manning Bucktrout Preface
By Terry L. Meyers
This project presents the “Daybook and Ledger” kept by Richard Manning Bucktrout in Williamsburg, Virginia between 1850 and 1866. It consists of 277 pages (plus some loose sheets) recording the detailed invoices Bucktrout presented to those for whom he had performed a service.
Like his father, Benjamin Bucktrout, an emigrant from England (d. 1812), Richard Manning Bucktrout (1805-1866) was an entrepreneur. He did just about anything that might bring in a buck or a shilling. He made keys, repaired furniture, mounted curtains, sold lumber and other goods, and rented out anything he owned, from land and houses to his carriage, his horses, and his slave. Again like his father, the younger Bucktrout was also the town’s undertaker, responsible for providing coffins and burial for virtually everyone in Williamsburg and the surrounding countryside, rich and poor, white and black, free or slave.
Richard Manning Bucktrout’s meticulous entries in his Daybook and Ledger form a diary, a detailed account of daily life and death in a small but historically important Virginia town for sixteen years before, during, and, briefly, after the Civil War. Though weak on spelling (his accent can often be inferred from his spelling), Bucktrout commanded the precision not only of the businessman but of the writer.
Social historians will find useful information, such as wage rates, in Bucktrout’s seemingly mundane lists of firewood sold and delivered, and the number of days he hires out one of his slaves, William Waller, to work on the city’s streets or for local farmers. Even the accounts of rents Bucktrout received and the barter sometimes involved will be of interest. A number of entries detail the upkeep and repairs of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, where Bucktrout for some years had a maintenance contract.
But perhaps most fascinating are the funeral records. Here Bucktrout’s precision is especially captivating as he records services and costs and identifies the families involved, noting their race (if they are not white) and their status (if they are free blacks). In addition to mentions of disease, if there is anything unusual about a death, Bucktrout puts it down. He tells of the landowner who announces he is “going home” before he walks to his barn and hangs himself. We hear as well about throat-slitting suicide, murder, and the hunter whose rifle discharges into his back as he drags the gun through brush. Though Bucktrout sometimes records where the body is buried, many of the locations can not be found today (one exception may be the burials of the Debress family [also spelled by Bucktrout Debriss]; those may have taken place at their family cemetery, located just steps north of the Williamsburg Inn Bathhouse).
As the Civil War engulfed Williamsburg, soldiers from all over the Confederacy died in the city’s many hospitals. Bucktrout’s invoices for the burials, each carefully addressed to the Confederate States of America, will be of particular interest to genealogists. He almost always records the name, rank, and military unit of the soldier and sometimes adds the circumstances of the man’s death. And he tells precisely which grave the body lies in at Cedar Grove. the Williamsburg municipal cemetery. These burial invoices in some instances may be the only proof of the soldier’s service; the Confederacy had not yet fully organized its record keeping. Bucktrout’s careful accounting disproves the local tradition that the fallen Confederates lie in a common grave.
Since the 1920's extraordinary resources and effort have gone to the exploration and reconstruction of 18th century Williamsburg, the Colonial Capital, but the 19th century is largely missing. Bucktrout's Daybook and Ledger may well be to 19th century Williamsburg what the Frenchman's Map is to the 18th.
The publication of the Bucktrout Daybook and Ledger is the latest reminder that interesting, even historic, events took place in Williamsburg after 1800. When Colonial Williamsburg restored the 18th Century Public Hospital, it included a representation of 19th century cells and medical treatment. The Foundation has published a booklet on Civil War Williamsburg, by Carson O. Hudson (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1997), sponsored a Williamsburg Institute on Civil War Williamsburg (1997), and until several years ago offered regular walking tours on the subject. The journal Colonial Williamsburg (Summer 1996) featured watercolors of Williamsburg by Robert K. Sneden at the time of the Battle of Williamsburg. Steps are underway to re-interpret Fort Magruder; Redoubt No. 1 on Quarterpath Road has recently been restored.
In the last decade a number of works have appeared on the Peninsular Campaign and local history during the Civil War, including David F. Riggs' Embattled Shrine: Jamestown During the Civil War (White Mane Press, 1997); Earl Hasting's Pitiless Rain: The Battle of Williamsburg, 1862 (White Mane Press, 1997); Carol Dubb's Defend This Old Town: Williamsburg During the Civil War (LSU Press, 2002); and R. L. Murray, The Battle of Williamsburg; A Special Edition of New Yorkers in The Civil War, A Historic Journal, Volume 7 (Benedum Books, 2006). See too a William and Mary M.A. thesis in History, Rebecca Sommers, "The Honorable Women of Williamsburg: Resistance to Union Occupation and Female Honor" (2006).
Laura S. Haviland, an abolitionist, recorded her visit to Williamsburg in 1866 in her autobiography, A Woman's Life Work (1881). And the experiences of several Quaker teachers here to teach freed slaves are available in Richard L. Morton, "Life in Virginia, by a 'Yankee Teacher,' Margaret Newbold Thorpe," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 64:2 (April 1956), 180-207.
The tercentenary history of Williamsburg also covers the era: Williamsburg, Virginia: A City before the State, 1699-1999, ed. Robert P. Maccubbin (City of Williamsburg, 2000).