Edward P. Buford

Admitted to the Virginia bar in 1887, Buford argued his first case before the Supreme Court of Virginia in 1890, a year before Brunswick voters elected him their Commonwealth attorney (prosecutor). He was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court in 1893. Buford continued as Brunswick's prosecutor until 1917, when he resigned rather than enforce the new Prohibition law.^[6]

In private practice, Buford partnered with several local attorneys. In 1917 he unsuccessfully represented a widow who had signed a prenuptial agreement, which he unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.^[7] In 1928 Buford would publish a Virginia Law Review article about the Prohibition Amendment, having previously published an article about the Federal Employer's Liability Act in the Harvard Law Review in 1914, as well as five speeches in Virginia bar publications in the 1920s. Meanwhile, by 1885, his lawyer father (himself a former Brunswick prosecutor) had become a judge for Brunswick County, but resigned to successfully run for the legislature in 1892.^[8] While Brunswick voters had not re-elected delegate Frank Buford in 1895, in 1897 this man (his son) was elected as their part-time representative in the Virginia House of Delegates, electorally defeating his father's successor.^[9] Buford may have unsuccessfully run in the Democratic primary in 1899 for the state senate seat vacated by fellow Brunswick county clerk, lawyer and future Congressman Robert Turnbull but won by fellow lawyer and future governor William Hodges Mann of Nottoway County, the congressional district boundaries being readjusted the next year to exclude Brunswick County.^[10]

Decades later, in 1919 (after Buford's resignation as prosecutor and long after adoption of a new state constitution in 1902 created circuit courts and a decade after his father's death), this man again ran for Brunswick County's legislative seat, and again served one term.^[11] During that legislative term, his native Brunswick County experienced its last illegal lynching, as a crowd lynched one of two men from Norfolk who had encountered the postmaster of the Tobacco store and post office walking home, robbed and murdered him,^[12] not long after a similar incident in Dinwiddie County. Within days, sheriffs from the two counties had apprehended two suspects wearing the postmaster's watch and clothing from the store. However, they encountered a crowd, which lynched one man in front of that store before the postmaster's funeral.^[13] The sheriffs had managed to escape with the other man, who was ultimately tried, convicted and executed in Richmond. Local ministers had condemned the lynching, but the grand jury ultimately secured no indictments for that crime.^[14][15] In 1922 Buford became the president of the Virginia State Bar.^[16]

After that second legislative term, on May 22, 1924, Buford was the main speaker at the dedication of a historical marker at Fort Christanna by the Society of the Colonial Dames of America, which had acquired approximately 3 acres of land from what had long been called the "Fort Hill" plantation, and which centuries earlier had been Fort Christanna, a resettlement area for displaced Occaneechi and other Siouan speaking native peoples.^[17] Before his speech, the platform erected for the distinguished guests, including Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Rev. Bland Tucker and a group of Pamunkey Native Americans from King William County dressed in full regalia, the platform collapsed, but no one was hurt, and Buford delivered his address.^[18]

Buford committed suicide with a shotgun blast to his head on October 26, 1931, about 2 months shy of his 66th birthday, and was buried in the family cemetery at Sherwood.^[19][20] Thus, his sister Elizabeth, who had lived with him at Sherwood during the last federal census of his lifetime, became the last surviving Buford sibling.^[21] During the Great Depression, which had begun by that time, following years of drought in the area, land prices had plummeted and four banks failed in Lawrenceville, with only the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Broadnax branch remaining by 1937.^[22] His sister donated his papers to the University of Virginia in 1936, and the institution obtained releases from distant relatives in the 1980s and recently indexed them.^[23]