HISTORIC SALUTE
Annual Buckville gathering focuses on grave dedication
BUCKVILLE — Each year, people from across Garland County gather at Buckville Baptist Church and Cemetery for a reunion of sorts for a town that once existed along the banks of the Ouachita River.
Sunday was the 75th annual Buckville reunion, and families from as far off as Florida came to reminisce on their family history. This year, however, the gathering also served as a dedication ceremony for a previously unmarked Confederate grave.
The grave of Marcus Anderson had sat unmarked in Buckville Cemetery since his death in 1914. Even though his family knew
he was buried in the cemetery, they could not find the exact location. But during an annual cleaning and decorating of the tombstones, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy found an unmarked grave and, after extensive research, discovered it belonged to Anderson, a private in the Consolidated Arkansas Infantry.
Anderson’s great-grandson, Johnny Anderson, saw the event for the annual Buckville reunion on Facebook last year. He noticed they were discussing the fact they found Marcus Anderson’s grave and decided to reach out to the organization. Eventually, his family made contact with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, confirming it was, in fact, the same Marcus Anderson, and preparations for the memorial began.
The Anderson family had purchased a tombstone for Marcus Anderson nearly 20 years prior, but it had remained in Johnny Anderson’s parents’ garage because no one knew where it needed to be placed. Anderson was buried next to his third wife, Francis California McCollum. She had remarried after his death and took on the surname Parson. Marcus Anderson’s body lies next to her tombstone, which is marked “Parson.”
“My dad and I came up here a few years before he died and we looked, we just never made the connection with ‘Parson,’” Johnny Anderson said.
Marcus Anderson was buried in Buckville Cemetery, part of a town that now sits at the bottom of Lake Ouachita.
Today, the former residents of Buckville return to the only structure from that area still intact, the Buckville Baptist Church and Cemetery. Although the church had to be moved to ensure its preservation, the cemetery is in the original location.
According to an article that was published on June 9, 2001, in The Sentinel-Record, prior to the completion of Blakely Mountain Dam and Lake Ouachita, the Buckville Church was moved about one-quarter mile to above water level. It is the only structure that remains intact from the area now under Lake Ouachita.
The reunion has been a tradition for “Bucktowners” for the past several years. Some of the town’s original residents come back each year and recount of the fond memories they had back in Buckville, or as they recall, “Bucktown.”
“The Corps of Engineers began buying up the property around here in the 1940s, but they never got down to actually starting the dam until about 1951. People started moving out after they bought the property, but some of us, like my daddy, stayed around a bit longer. We stayed until I was ready to leave the oneroom school house out here and go to high school in 1949,” said Peggy Howell Fox.
While no one in the town seemed particularly happy about the dam’s construction, the surviving residents and their families return each year to preserve the town’s unique history. Although the reunion started out as a type of memorial, it has morphed into a family reunion of sorts. Family members work to determine which ancestors actually lived in the town, and use that information to connect with the other families that attend.
The dedication of Anderson’s grave took place toward the end of the reunion. The ceremony was conducted by members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and an armed salute, as well as presentation and retirement of the Confederate flags, was conducted by James M. Keller Camp No. 648.