Mildred Anne Buxton, Countess Buxton GBE JP (née Smith; 29 June 1866 – 7 December 1955) was a British social activist and philanthropist.[1]

Biography

Buxton was born in St George Hanover Square, London,[2] the daughter of Hugh Colin Smith of Mount Clare. London and Constance Maria Josepha (née Adeane).[1] She was baptised 23 July 1866 Saint Thomas Church in Portman Square, Westminster.[3]

She married politician Sydney Charles Buxton, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in 1896, and had three children. She was extremely active in social work when her husband was Governor-General of South Africa from 1914–20. In 1917, their only son, 2nd Lt. Hon. Denis Buxton, was killed in action during the First World War. In Cape Town, she and her husband founded a children's hospital in memory of their only son who was killed in action in France.[1]

When they returned from South Africa, the Buxtons settled in Newtimber Place, a Grade I listed country house in Sussex, where Lady Buxton became a Justice of the Peace. Lord Buxton died in 1934, at which point his titles became extinct. In 1935, she donated nearly 150 acres of downland at Newtimber Hill to the National Trust.[1]

As a result of her marriage, she was styled as Viscountess Buxton, effective 11 May 1914, and later as the Countess Buxton, effective 8 November 1920.

Marriage and issue

She married Sydney Charles Buxton, first and last Earl Buxton, son of Charles Buxton and Emily Mary Holland, on 7 July 1896 at Roehampton, Surrey. By his first wife, he had two sons (both of whom predeceased him) and a daughter.[4]

The Buxtons had three children: a twin daughter and son in 1897 and a daughter in 1910.[1][4]

  • 2nd Lt. Hon. Denis Bertram Sydney Buxton (29 November 1897 – 9 October 1917), killed in the First World War
  • Lady Doreen Maria Josepha Sydney Buxton (29 November 1897 – 28 July 1923), married 24 January 1918 Charles Alfred Euston Fitzroy, a scion of the dukes of Grafton. She died aged 25, shortly after the birth of her third child. After her death, her husband remarried. His second wife, Lucy Eleanor Barnes (died 1943), was a first cousin of his first wife through her Buxton mother, in 1924. He succeeded to the dukedom in 1936 when a young cousin, the 9th Duke of Grafton, was killed in a motoring race.
  • Lady Althea Constance Dorothy Sydney Buxton (2 August 1910 – 25 July 2004), married Ven. Peter Charles Eliot MBE TD, the Archdeacon of Worcester

Two of their children predeceased them both. Denis, their only son and only heir to the titles, was killed in action in the Battle of Passchendaele while serving with the Coldstream Guards in the First World War. His twin sister, Lady Maria, died in 1923.[4]

Honours

She was invested as a Dame Grand Cross, Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 1919, in recognition for her social work.[1]

Death

She died at Newtimber Place on 7 December 1955, aged 89. [1]

Sources

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Countess of Buxton". The Times. 8 December 1955. p. 14.
  2. ↑ 1901 England Census
  3. ↑ London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1917
  4. 1 2 3 Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 622. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.
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