Burning the Gaspee! American History. Bucklin's shot starts
the American Revolution.

The American attack on the English Navy ship Gaspee  was significant in American Revolutionary War history.  According to the English Attorney General, Joseph Bucklin's shot in the Gaspee Attack was the first Act of War! Rhode Island and the Joseph Bucklin Society celebrate Bucklin's shot in the Gaspee attack as the first shot of the Revolution.

The Joseph Bucklin Society conducts research and education on the start of the American Revolution in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  Broadly, we have available legal, political and economic history of the period of 1600 to 1799 in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We specialize in the events and persons involved in the Gaspee Affair. This website is one of the two most complete of the publically available sources of in-depth information about the Gaspee affair.

American History - plus Bucklin History & Genealogy.

Searching for detailed Bucklin family history?  We go beyond research regarding the immediate family of the Joseph Bucklin who fired the shot in the Gaspee attack. This website has many pages of information, with particular reference to identifying and preserving the biographical information of the Bucklins of 1600 to 1899. It's more than genealogy; it's history. We maintain a 4000 person database of information on Bucklins. (If you are a Bucklin, then you are almost certainly a descendent of William Bucklin, who arrived in America in 1634!  His family was one of earliest, and one of the most important landowners, of early Rhode Island.)

About the Joseph Bucklin Society Organization.

The Joseph Bucklin Society is dedicated to historical research and the dissemination of educational material. The Society is not connected with any denomination or political group. We are here to preserve find and preserve important American, Gaspee, and Bucklin history from loss. Join the Society and get the benefit of the coordinated research efforts of Society members in research and preservation of history.  (If you join, you receive a distinguished and personalized three color certificate suitable for framing, a quiet mark of your interest in history or of your American family roots back to the 1600's. and automatically are subscribed to the Bucklin Society Newsletter..)

This site is extensive. That's why we have divided it into several separate divisions. We have over 2,500 files of information, internally linked by about 6,000 links connecting the documents, data, and pictures.  We have more than 250 links to sources of information outside our website, and more than 60 other organizations have websites that link into our information pages.

Division 1 of this web site is the history of the Gaspee Affair of 1772, including events a few years before and after it. It gives you an overview of the burning of the Gaspee. This division is the smallest in this site -- because this division directly links you to Gaspee.Info --- our separate site of much detailed nformation about the American's attack on the English ship Gaspee.

Division 2 of this web site is American colonial history, with special emphasis on colonial Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and their part in the American Revolution.

Division 3 of this web site is "English Roots."  We shortly discuss a background of English history that impacted the Rhode Island and Massachusetts settlers before the American Revolution.  Here also, in this division, is materials about the English Roots of  the Bucklin family.

Divison 4 of this web site is the place you can find the Internet's most comprehensive site for Bucklin family history. from 1600 to 1899. Our central database for every Bucklin is for any Bucklin of which there is any historical information.  (There now are over 4000 names in the data base.) This database also includes historical data on members of the 1772 Gaspee raiding party.

Divisions 5 and 6 provide you with the information every Bucklin should know, about his/'her roots, and the reasons to be proud of the Bucklins that played significant roles in Colonial and pre-Revolutionary America. Specifically, a Bucklin should know about William Bucklin, born in 1606, and his family; and about Joseph Bucklin 4th, born in 1719, and his family.

Divisions 7 and 8 provide you with information on some of the about places and persons named Bucklin

Division 9 of this website has our administrative pages to help members, or to organize and run the Society, or to inform you about the Joseph Bucklin Society. Division 9 also includes our book store and our on-line store where you can purchase Joseph Bucklin and Gaspee  logo caps, aprons, T-shirts, note cards and other gift items.  In our book store we suggest gift books and books for you.  Although our emphasis is on history, any book available in print can be purchased on-line, through our bookstore, quickly and easily.  It costs the same to buy here as elsewhere, but if you buy through our bookstore, Amazon gives us about 3% of your purchase price to keep this website available to you.

We are an American history organization, and this site is basically an history website, devoted especially to Colonial history and Revolutionary War era history.  This society was named in honor of Joseph Bucklin. His family line started in New England in 1630 and were a notable part of early American history. The Bucklins of New England are good examples of the English people who came to New England, and of what, why, and how they lived and worked creating what became the United States. That's one of the reasons we have detailed Bucklin family information on this website.

In short, these web pages are where you find history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Colony, in the period 1600--- 1799, with particular reference to the New England Bucklin families and settlements and their movements across the country.