Abraham Buford II

Abraham Buford was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, the son of Frances W. Kirtley and her husband, William B. Buford (1781–1848). He was named for his great-uncle Abraham who was a Continental Army officer during the American Revolutionary War. He descended from a Huguenot family named Beaufort who fled persecution in France and settled in England before emigrating to America in 1635. His cousins, John and Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, who grew up nearby, were generals in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Buford studied at Centre College before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1837. Graduating in 1841, as a second-lieutenant with the First dragoons from 1842 through 1846, he did Frontier duty in the Kansas Territory and the Indian Territory. He then served in the Mexican–American War in which he was appointed brevet captain for bravery at the Battle of Buena Vista. When that war ended, he was dispatched for further duty on the Frontier and in 1848 was part of the Santa Fe Trail expedition. In 1849, Buford escorted the mail from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the east, using, in part, the new Cherokee Trail. He was then sent to the Army's cavalry school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but in October 1854 he resigned his commission and returned to his native Kentucky where his family owned a farm property near Versailles in his native Woodford County.

Abe Buford named his Woodford County farm Bosque Bonita ("Beautiful Woods"), a place The New York Times would call the "most princely residence in the Bluegrass region." It was here that slave Billy Walker was born in 1860. He went on to ride Baden-Baden to victory in the 1877 Kentucky Derby.

Beginning in 1852, the stallion Sovereign stood at stud at Bosque Bonita, developing into an influential sire. The next year, Abe Buford was part of a syndicate with Richard Ten Broeck, Captain Willa Viley and Junius R. Ward, who bought the then three-year-old colt, Lexington. In 1858 Lexington was sold to Robert A. Alexander of Woodburn Stud for $15,000 in 1858, reportedly the then highest price ever paid for an American horse.

Buford also owned, raced, or bred a number of successful horses including Nellie Gray, Enquirer, Crossland, and Versailles. Mannie Gray, whom Thoroughbred Heritage calls "one of the most influential American mares in breeding history," was owned and raced by Buford who sold her to fellow Kentuckian, Major Barak G. Thomas of Dixiana Farm. In 1866, Leamington's new owner, Canadian Roderick Cameron, sent him to stand at stud at Bosque Bonita for the season. Although Leamington covered just thirteen mares that year, he produced an outstanding crop of foals, including, Anna Mace, Enquirer, Longfellow, Lynchburg, Lyttleton, and Miss Alice.

In 1875, General George Custer came to Bosque Bonita Farm to buy cavalry remounts before the Battle of Little Big Horn.[1]

A relief of Brigadier General Abraham Buford by Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson at Vicksburg National Military Park.

During the 1870s Abe Buford suffered a series of financial reversals that forced him into bankruptcy with the resulting loss of Bosque Bonita Farm to his creditors. In addition, he suffered a devastating personal loss when his only son, William A. Buford, died at age twenty-three in 1872. He lost his wife Amanda Harris Buford in 1879 and on March 26 of that same year, his brother, Colonel Thomas Buford of Henry County, Kentucky, shot and killed Judge John Milton Elliott in Frankfort, Kentucky. Tom Buford surrendered to police and was jailed pending trial. Abe Buford came to his brother's aid and spent a great deal of money on legal fees for his defense. On appeal of a guilty verdict, Thomas Buford would eventually be found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Anchorage, Kentucky psychiatric hospital.

In his final years, Abe Buford made a living working for racing newspapers. In 1884, following his brother Thomas's much publicized escape from the insane asylum with some newspaper headlines saying he was "thirsting for blood", Abe Buford sought some peace and went to visit his nephew Benjamin T. Buford in Danville, Indiana. There, in his bedroom, a very depressed Abraham Buford took his own life. His remains were sent back to Kentucky where he was buried in the Lexington Cemetery.

The Brigadier General Abraham Buford Relief was erected November 21, 1911, on South Confederate Avenue in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

• List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)

• Buford, Marcus Bainbridge. "A Genealogy of the Buford Family in America" (1903) ASIN: B00085UTNA
• Heidler, David Stephen,/Heidler, Jeanne T./ Coles, David J./ McPherson, James M. "Encyclopedia Of The American Civil War" (2002) W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-04758-5
• Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 0-8160-1055-2.
• Brigadier General Buford's report on the Battle of Champion's Hill
• National Park Service website with list of the Commanders of the Vicksburg Campaign
• Profile of Brigadier General Abraham Buford at the Vicksburg National Military Park
• "Brigadier General Abraham Buford at the Kentucky Historical Society". Archived from the original on 2011-08-04. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
• "General Abraham Buford, C.S.A. at the Alabama Department of Archives and History". Archived from the original on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2017-06-25.
• December 21, 1883 The New York Times article on the escape of Thomas Buford from the Anchorage asylum
• June 10, 1884 The New York Times article on the death of Abraham Buford

• Abraham Buford II at Find a Grave