Keeping Up with the Buckleys
Genealogy can be slow and piecemeal, even a little messy. It requires patience and a certain amount of tolerance for uncertainty. So it is with the Buckleys, my great-great-grandmother’s family, whom I started researching based on the offhand comment (by her son) that her brother was a leading lawyer in Belfast. I found him and his various children, most of whom died young and only one of whom had children—well, actually just one child before he and his wife also died young.
That child bore the impressive name Herbert William Alen Buckley and was born in Dublin in 1897. When his parents died just a couple years later, he went to live with his uncle, Charles Edward Buckley, who had taken over the family law firm in Belfast. Herbert’s aunt, Agnes Emily, and his uncle, Frederick William, neither of whom married, seem to have been involved in his life, too. They all lived in Holywood, Co. Down, Emily and Fred in the same home.
That’s where I became stuck, however. Did Herbert marry and have kids? Emily and Fred both died in Harrogate, in Yorkshire, and Charles the solicitor was working in Scotland at the time of his death. There are records indicating that Herbert served in the Royal Air Corps during World War I. Perhaps he was educated in England. And there is a Herbert Buckley with the same birthdate who died in Surrey in 1973. (I can’t find an obituary.)
Another intriguing bit of information: In various records, Buckley’s surname was fashioned Alen-Buckley, as in Herbert William Alen-Buckley, or H. W. Alen-Buckley. This led to my discovering an English lawyer, still living, named Oonagh Alen-Buckley. Her brother, Michael Ulic Anthony Alen-Buckley is a wealthy hedge fund investor. His three forenames struck me as being in the family tradition and I wondered whether he and his sister belonged to Herbert’s line.
With only a little bit of searching, I found their father, Ulic Charles Locke Alen-Buckley, born in Dublin in 1927. Again, so many names! But was Ulic’s father Herbert? I became stuck again, not finding any records to confirm. On Ancestry.com, there seemed to be a family tree that included the Buckleys but was private. I reached out to the owner and what do you know—his great-great-grandmother seems to have been my great-great-grandmother’s sister.
Here’s another thing about genealogy: it’s a team sport.
He gave me the names of several of my great-great-grandmother’s siblings I hadn’t found yet, as well as a child of Michael the solicitor I had missed. She, too, died young, and (interestingly) in France. He also gave me the marriage record of our elusive Herbert Alen-Buckley. On September 8, 1925, in Dublin, H. W. married Blánaid Ely O’Carroll. While an earlier probate record, regarding the estate of Herbert’s uncle Charles, indicated that Herbert was a journalist, the marriage record says he was working as a distiller.
A newspaper search puts him at the funeral, in November 1927, of John H. Locke, proprietor of John Locke and Co., Ltd., Distillers, a family business that dated back to 1757. This Mr. Locke was also a director of the Dublin Distillers Co., and it was as a representative of that company that Herbert attended Locke’s funeral. The relationship may have been closer than that, however. Remember Ulic, who may or may not be Herbert’s son? His full name was Ulic Charles [after Herbert’s uncle?] Locke [after the distiller?] Alen-Buckley. The fact that he was born a couple years after and in the same place as Herbert’s wedding is suggestive, too.
One final bit of intriguing evidence: Ulic attended school at Ampleforth, in Yorkshire. Remember that Herbert’s aunt and uncle both died in Yorkshire and Charles worked in Scotland. All suggest a family move to the north of England, so perhaps that connection led Ulic to be educated there.
Absent a record that directly indicates that Herbert was Ulic’s father, and that therefore the Buckley line that began in North Kerry with my great-great-great-grandparents is still alive in London and investing in hedge funds, we must rely on indirect and circumstantial evidence.—names and places, etc. We must be content, for now anyway, with uncertainty. Still, with what we have, I’m fairly convinced that Ulic Charles Locke Alen-Buckley is who I think he is.
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