Aylette Buckner

He may today be best known as the father of Simon Bolivar Buckner, a career military officer who served with the U.S. Army before becoming a Confederate general, and who after being pardoned for his role in the Civil War, was elected Kentucky's governor.

His grandfather whom he knew as a boy, also Aylett Buckner (spelling varied in that era), had served as major in the Fauquier County militia, then in the Virginia Line and received land grants in Kentucky in partial compensation that military service.

Complicating matters, he had a cousin Aylette Hawes Buckner (1809–1867), who was also a lawyer and slaveowner in Green County, Kentucky.

One of their sons, Simon Bolivar Buckner (1823–1914) pursued a military career, first with the U.S. Army, then as a Confederate general, before becoming Kentucky's governor.

The 1820 federal census (which did not distinguish names within families, nor use lined paper) seems to show his household as including three white and fourteen enslaved people.

Airlie, Natchez, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1938. Built during Spanish regime. Owned by Aylette Buckner in antebellum days. Used as a hospital for Union soldiers in Civil War