The information which I have about the ‘deep’ history of the Buchanan clan comes from the Buchanan Book, or to give it its correct title, The Buchanan Book. The life of Alexander Buchanan Q.C. of Montreal, followed by an account of the family of Buchanan, by A. W. Patrick Buchanan K.C. Montreal, 1911. The author of this book was Arthur William Patrick Buchanan (1870 – 1939), a grandson of the titular Buchanan, who printed 300 copies of the book for private circulation. He also published The Later Leaves of The Buchanan Book (1929). He was admitted to the bar of the province of Quebec in 1894 and was appointed a KC in 1908. He later published a history of the early judiciary in Canada: The Bench and Bar of Lower Canada Down to 1850 (1925).
I was the fortunate recipient of a copy of a chapter of the Buchanan Book – dealing with our branch of the family (Family of Dr George Buchanan of Fintona, Co. Tyrone) – back in the 1980s, courtesy of Marjorie Buchanan Benson (sister of my grandfather Charles, who was living in Vancouver at the time). One of the informants for ‘our’ chapter was Thomas Hardinge Buchanan, brother of my great grandfather, Dr George Charles Buchanan, and of the Rev William Alexander Going Buchanan.
Now in the digital age, this book can be accessed on the web, courtesy of the University of Toronto at https://archive.org/stream/buchananbooklife00buchuoft/buchananbooklife00buchuoft_djvu.tx. It was also reprinted in 2009 and can be purchased from online booksellers such as the Book Depository, Amazon, etc (for a rather large sum).
A. W. Patrick Buchanan seems to have gone to some lengths to gather the material for the book. He was a member of the Buchanan Society in Glasgow, a charitable organisation founded in 1725 to assist the needy of the Buchanan clan, and was interested in heraldry. In 1937 he advertised for documents in relation to a submission to the Court of the Lord Lyon, the heraldic authority for Scotland, for a coat of arms for his Buchanan family:
WANTED
£5 WILL BE PAID for the FIRST CERTIFICATE received in respect of each of the following:
(1) Marriage of John Buchanan (born at Eccles Green, Fintona, co. Tyrone, Ireland), Hospital Mate, or Assistant-Surgeon, or Surgeon, and Lucy Richardson about 1790-97, (possibly in London);
(2) Baptism of their son Alexander Buchanan, born 22 April 1798 (probably at Gosport or Canterbury), and
(3) of their son John Buchanan about 1800 probably at Ipswich.
BUCHANAN & BUCHANAN, Solicitors,
276 St. James Street, W., MONTREAL, Canada.
He was successful in this pursuit, and the arms were registered in 1937. A. W. Patrick Buchanan’s family is very distant from ours; the last common ancestor would have been in the 18th century, although we do have some Buchanans named Eccles, and also come from Fintona, Co. Tyrone.
I am hardly in a position to confirm the accuracy of all the Buchanan genealogical information in the Buchanan book. For ‘our’ branch, however, at least for the generations between my grandparents and great-great-grandparents, most information has been presented correctly as far as I can tell, except for the fate of my great grand-uncle, the Rev. William Alexander Going Buchanan, who is said to have been the rector at Marble Bar, in Western Australia, at the time of his death in 1906.
Marble Bar!! Hottest place in Australia – or close to it. According to Wikipedia, it set a world record of most consecutive days of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924. Isolated and distant from any major towns – what was an Anglo-Irish person doing there? This seemed such an unlikely event that I investigated further. I was able to follow up from information received from the archivist at the Anglican Archdiocese of Western Australia. Indeed, he was at Marble Bar, but he did not die there.
According to Crockford’s Clerical Directory (1905), William Buchanan had studied at the Theological College in Manchester in 1898 and had been ordained a priest in 1901. His subsequent appointments were as curate at the Holy Trinity Church in Bolton, Lancashire, then at Dronfield in Derbyshire, and at The Limes, Bitton, near Bath in the Diocese of Bristol.
He sailed on the Ortona of the Orient Pacific Line from London on 25th August, arriving in Fremantle on 28th September 1905. He was one of three English ministers who travelled to Western Australia in 1905 to join the Anglican diocese of Bunbury, which then included Marble Bar and other northern locations. The book, A hundred not out, Anglican Clergy in Western Australia 1829-1929, by Ted Doncaster, notes for W. A. G. Buchanan: September 1905 – 1906: R. Marble Bar [Bunbury]. He was not to stay long in Marble Bar.
Although the population of Marble Bar township at the 2006 census was 194, in 1891 after the discovery of gold nearby, it was estimated at 5,000. A big enough population to support a newspaper …
The Pilbara Goldfield News (Marble Bar) reported
- on Saturday 11th November 1905: The Rev. Mr Buchanan, who has been appointed to this district, has, we believe, gone on to Derby to officiate at the marriage of the Rev. W G. Haynes. He cannot, therefore, reach Port Hedland until the Bullarra returns from Wyndham, about the 22nd inst. Mr. Buchanan, we learn, was previously in charge of Bitton Parish, near Bath (Eng.) and has not been long in the State.
- on Saturday 2 December 1905: The Rev. Mr. Buchanan will conduct his first service in Marble Bar on Sunday next.
- on Saturday 30 December 1905: Divine services will be conducted in the Miners Institute tomorrow morning and evening by the Rev. Mr. Buchanan.
- on Saturday 20 January 1906: The Rev. Mr. Buchanan, who has been in Marble Bar about seven weeks, leaves by coach to-day for the metropolis. The Bishop is endeavouring to secure another man for this portion of the diocese …
- The same paper later made a reference to the fact “Rev. Mr. Buchanan was sent to this parish, who was physically incapable of attending to the work the office entailed“.
The Western Mail (Perth) reported on Saturday 27 January 1906:
Marble Bar. The cool weather of last week has been followed by trying days. The shade temperature on Monday was 110 degs., and on Tuesday it was 111 degs. Last week the shade temperature fell to 92 degs. Several places have received splendid rains, but a general downfall is badly needed. The De Grey River ran past De Grey Station last week, for the first time in three years. Rev. Mr. Buchanan, who has been stationed here for about six weeks, will shortly leave the district.
It is likely that he was already in very poor health and the discomforts of living in Marble Bar would not have helped. On his return to England in April 1906, he was admitted to the Sanatorium in Maldon, Essex and died there on 28th May 1906, of pulmonary tuberculosis.
Rev. William Alexander Going Buchanan. Photograph is marked as from a Maldon, Essex, studio, so is likely to have been taken not long before his death.
The book Ritualist on a Tricycle by Colin Holden (1998) is a biography of Frederick Goldsmith, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Bunbury, W.A., which included responsibility for the North West, prior to its establishment as a separate diocese in 1910. The fate of Rev. Buchanan is used as evidence of the hostile environment which they were forced to endure.
… a ten-week visit in 1906 beginning on 15 June took Goldsmith to Carnarvon, Onslow, Cossack, Port Headland, Broome, Derby – and from there on a camping tour of more remote centres, and to Marble Bar and Roebourne. Death must have appeared an uncomfortably close companion in the north: during his visit to Derby, the magistrate, Dr McQueen, collapsed and died on the verandah of the Institute as a congregation of almost sixty gathered for a Sunday evensong.
At the beginning of the next year Goldsmith wrote to Montgomery that W.A.G. Buchanan, a priest who had been at Marble Bar ‘was invalided south, and had died shortly afterwards’. Climate and isolation took their toll in due course on Archdeacon Brooks, who arrived in 1906 and was sent to Broome, but by the end of 1909, his health too had been seriously affected.
In an essay on the church in Australia written at the end of his life, Goldsmith expressed a commonly held view of the north: it was an area hardly fit for European habitation. The physical problems experienced by his skeleton staff could only have encouraged him in making this conclusion.
It is not known how long William was suffering TB symptoms but given that he died within such a short space of time after leaving Marble Bar, it is more likely that it was this illness rather than the conditions of the north that caused his invalidity.
He was 38 when he died. He was buried in All Saints and St Peter Anglican Church yard, Maldon, Essex.
All Saints and St Peter’s Church, Maldon, Essex. Photo by J Buchanan, 2006
Unlike his siblings who were all born in Ireland, William’s place of birth was given as Peckham, Surrey on census records, but as yet I have not been able to locate his birth record. He was known to the family as Willie. The ‘Going’ part of his name is his mother’s maiden surname; the Going family will be covered in a later post.
Children of Charles Todd Buchanan and Arabella Hardinge Going (click to open in a new window)
black2buchanan 