William Hepburn Buckler

William Hepburn Buckler, FBA (1867–1952) was a French-born American classical scholar, archaeologist, diplomat and lawyer. He practised as a lawyer in Baltimore before serving in a number of diplomatic posts, which included service in London during the First World War and membership of the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. While a lawyer, Buckler had developed an interest in archaeology and classical scholarship. He was part of the US archaeological expedition (1910–14) to Sardis in modern-day Turkey and returned there in the 1920s to catalogue and decipher ancient inscriptions uncovered at the site – a project he remained involved with throughout the 1930s. He became an expert in the Lydian language and authored two monographs and three volumes of Monumenta Asiæ Minoris Antiqua. His scholarship was recognised with three honorary doctorates, a Festschrift (co-edited by his colleague W. M. Calder) and fellowship of the British Academy. Early life, family and education Born in Paris, France, on 1 February 1867, Buckler was the only son of Eliza née Ridgely (1828–1894), daughter of Thomas and Eliza (Eichelberger) Ridgely of Hampton, Maryland, and her second husband Dr Thomas Hepburn Buckler (1812–1901), who had practised as a physician in his native Baltimore (also in Maryland) until 1866, when he moved to Paris and gained a license to practise there which he renewed until 1890. Through his mother's first husband, the younger Buckler was half-brother to Henry White, who was the US Ambassador to Italy from 1905 to 1907 and to France from 1907 to 1909, and a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles. Legal and diplomatic career Buckler came to England for his university education. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1887 and graduated in 1900 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then completed a postgraduate Bachelor of Laws degree the following year and returned to the United States where he studied at the University of Maryland before he began practising law in Baltimore in 1893 or 1894. Sources variously state that he ended his legal practice in 1902, 1904 or 1905; Buckler himself stated 1902. By that time, he had already published two books: The Origin and History of Contract in Roman Law (1894) and Notes on Contracts and Torts of Lunatics (1901); Sales in the Instalment Place (1904), which also examined Roman Law, and Studies in American Trade Unionism (1906) followed.