Helping Build America: The Love Family of Buckland, Virginia

The Love family is remembered in Virginia especially for the legacy of Buckland. Established on John Love's land in 1798, the industrial town was one of the many innovative sparks in America's early industrial revolution. Buckland and towns like it were the Silicon Valley of their time-testing, applying and advancing new technologies. All but a few such towns of that era are gone. The Buckland of today is a modest community, which survived the Civil War and suburban development. About a dozen historic buildings and related properties are being preserved as a unique example of a thriving early 19th century commercial and manufacturing village.

William and Judith Love put down roots in the Maryland Colony in 1632 and became tobacco planters. Three generations later, Samuel Love served as a Charles County leader in the Revolutionary War. His sons fought in Virginia regiments of the Continental Army. The next generation served in the War of 1812, and later ones in the Civil War.

Though not of the first rank of families in American history, it is notable that so many Loves formed relationships with so many presidents and Founding Fathers. John Love enjoyed a political career in Virginia and the U.S. Congress, which gave him access to these men. Perhaps more so, geography abetted these relationships. George Washington's Mount Vernon and the early Love holdings nearby in Maryland bordered the Potomac River, a main travel and trading route in that era of poor roads. The federal government moved in 1800 to its permanent seat in Washington, DC, just forty miles east of Buckland. Though different in purpose and planned size, the new capital city and Buckland developed in parallel.

Many family members speculated with mixed success in Tennessee land grants, sold at low rates per acre to encourage settlement and as a revenue source. Traveling in Tennessee, several Loves established relationships with Andrew Jackson. Having witnessed fraudulent signing of land grant warrants in 1798, Charles J. Love wrote his report to Jackson. Then a U.S. Congressman, the future President was a leader in uncovering such fraud. Several Loves emigrated to Tennessee. In Greeneville to pursue a court case, John Love, childless in his first marriage, stayed, remarried and fathered four children. Charles moved his family to Nashville. From 1829 to 1837, he managed President Jackson's affairs at his Hermitage home and plantation. Charles' nephew, Andrew Jackson Watson, was born at the Hermitage in 1802.

Agriculture, grist milling, thoroughbred horse breeding, turnpike road building, land investment, general store operations, banking, politics, law practice, and public service are some of the Love family's occupations and endeavors. Many members owned slaves without whom some of these endeavors would have been impossible. The names of all enslaved people discovered in research for this book are documented in these pages.