Researching John Buckland

Buckland was born in Auckland in 1844, the son of William Buckland and Susan (nee Channing). Alfred Buckland was his uncle. Frank Buckland and Bessie Buckland were younger siblings; his brother became a politician and his sister (who married the collector and bibliographer Thomas Hocken) a notable artist and translator. Buckland received his education at Dr. Kinder's Grammar School and at St John's College in Auckland. On 17 December 1867, John Buckland married Caroline Fairburn. She was a daughter of William Thomas Fairburn. Her sister Elizabeth Fairburn was a missionary, teacher and bible translator and she was married to the missionary William Colenso.

Buckland fought in the Invasion of the Waikato under Colonel Marmaduke Nixon. Afterwards, he went to England for some years and returned in 1867, when he settled in Ōtāhuhu near Auckland, one of the fencible settlements established during the 1840s. Some years later, he moved to Otago and first lived at Waikouaiti and then at Taieri. He sold his holdings in Taieri in 1899.

Buckland represented the Waikouaiti electorate from to 1887, when he was defeated in the Waihemo electorate by John McKenzie. He was defeated again in by McKenzie in the Waitaki electorate. His brother Frank Buckland was a member for south Auckland electorates at the same time.

In 1902, Buckland moved from North Otago to Akaroa, where he bought the Mount Bossu estate sheep farm at Wainui. He served on the Akaroa Council Council for four years but did not stand for re-election in 1908 over failing health. He died on 4 April 1909 at his homestead, The Glen. He was survived by his wife and seven children, including Jessie Buckland. His grandson, Geoffrey Orbell, was born a few months before his death to his daughter Rachel Orbell.

Buckland was the son of the Rev. John Buckland, Rector of Templeton, Devonshire, and a nephew of Dr. William Buckland, Dean of Westminster. He received his early education from his father at Laleham, and was then sent to Rugby School, of which school his uncle, Dr. Arnold, was at the time head master. At the age of seventeen he went to the University of Oxford, where he held a studentship at Christ Church.

After taking his degree Buckland determined to emigrate to the colonies, and sailed for New Zealand, but in consequence of the unsettled state of affairs in that colony he removed to Tasmania, arriving in Hobart in February 1843. He was for a time second master of the Queen's School, of which the Rev. John Philip Gell was head master. On the closing of that school he opened a private school. In 1845 he was ordained. In 1846 the prospectus of a Church of England Grammar School was issued, and on 3 August in that year the school, named "The Hutchins School" in memory of Archdeacon William Hutchins, was opened at Hobart, with Buckland as head master. It soon became one of the leading schools of the colony, a position which it has ever since maintained, a large number of the most prominent men of Tasmania having received their education at the Hutchins School. Buckland held the post of headmaster for twenty-eight years, until his death, which took place at Hobart on 13 October 1874.