Constantine W. Buckley

Buckley was born in Surry County, North Carolina, on January 22, 1815, and kept his own store in Columbus, Georgia, until the panic of 1837 ruined him. He reached Houston destitute in 1838. While clerking at the State Department he studied law under Attorney General John Birdsall and was admitted to the bar in November 1839. Governor James Pinckney Henderson made him judge of the Seventh District in 1847. He chaired the House judiciary committee after 1859, lost a race for the state supreme court, and drowned in the Brazos near Columbia on December 19, 1865.

What the plaque says

Constantine W. Buckley Texas Confederate Legislator (1815 - 1865) Came to Texas from Georgia, 1838. Clerk, Republic of Texas State Department. Prominent Fort Bend County planter, lawyer, district judge and legislator. Served as one of the speakers of Texas House of Representatives in critical Civil War years, 1861-65. Legislators passed laws to raise, equip and supply 90,000 Texas soldiers who fought on all fronts and provided for defense of State's 2,000-mile frontier and coast against Indians, enemy troops and ships. As naval blockade reduced imports, the Legislature established plants to make guns, powder, cloth, salt. Contracts, subsidies and land grants were provided to encourage private industry to help meet heavy wartime demands for arms, supplies, clothing, food. Buckley and the other lawmakers taxed property and business and required farmers to turn in tithes of produce to meet the crisis. Funds were voted to buy cotton for State exchange for goods in Mexico; to aid soldiers' dependents; and to provide hospitals and medical care for troops--in and out of state. The Legislature was in almost continuous session. Poor pay and inflated Confederate money caused many members to live in tents and covered wagons on the capital grounds, and cook over campfires. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 17 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• The Menil Collection — 24 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 24 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Rothko Chapel — 24 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Early Courthouse Square — steps away
• Jane Long Boarding House — steps away
• Morton Lodge No. 72, A. F. & A. M. — steps away
• Erastus ("Deaf") Smith — steps away