Photo of the Month

July, 2002

CHARLES ROLLIN BUCKALEW

1821-1899

Charles R. Buckalew, one of Columbia County’s famous sons, was a politician that held public office on the local, state, and national levels. He was born in Fishing Creek Township on December 28, 1821. When he was fifteen years old, he became a student at the Franklin Academy in Harford, Susquehanna County. Afterwards he studied law under attorney Mordecai Jackson in Berwick in 1840 and three years later became a member of the Columbia County Bar. Buckalew moved to Bloomsburg in 1844 and opened his own law practice.

He had a long and active political career as a Democrat who served in numerous appointed and elected positions. Governor Shunk appointed him Deputy Attorney General for Columbia County in 1845 and serving until 1847. Beginning in 1850 the voters in three successive elections elected him to the Pennsylvania Senate. When James Buchanan became President, he appointed Buckalew in 1858 to be America’s resident minister to Ecuador, a post he held until 1861.

Prior to the seventeenth amendment to the federal Constitution that provided for the popular election of the U.S. senators, the election of the U.S. senators to the Congress rested with the state legislature. Pennsylvania’s legislation by a narrow margin of two votes, elected Buckalew to the U.S. Senate, over the Republican candidate Simon Cameron. After serving six years in the Senate from 1863-1869, the voters then elected him to the Pennsylvania Senate for a three-year term, 1869-1872. The next year he served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention that drafted a new document which the voters approved in 1874. Buckalew closed his long political career at the end of his two terms in the U.S. House Representatives from 1887 to 1891. Eight years later on May 19, 1899, he died at the age of seventy-eight.

Charles R. Buckalew’s long political career in a variety of different capacities stands unmatched in the history of Columbia County.