James Edward Buchanan, nicknamed “Buck,” bore no relation to the fifteenth president of the United States. He designed windows for a department store and was responsible for turning Walnut Grove Plantation in Roebuck, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, into an outdoor museum.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, Buchanan and his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he spent the majority of his childhood before relocating to Spartanburg. According to the 1940 census he had a high school education, and his obituary indicates that he was a veteran, having enlisted in 1939 in the Marine Corps at Parris Island, south of Beaufort, South Carolina. A thesis on Walnut Grove Plantation states he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but he also thought of himself as a self-taught artist. Buchanan had a passion for history and in 1957 was a co-founder of the Spartanburg Historical Society whose mission is: “to promote interest in the history of the county, to bring about a closer relationship among persons in the county who are interested in history, and to encourage preservation of historical sites, materials, and records of the area.”
That same year, 1957, Buchanan joined Irma Cook and Helen DuPré Moseley in establishing the Spartanburg Artists’ Guild which regularly hosted juried exhibitions. In addition, he occasionally designed sets and costumes and taught a community art class but was dissatisfied by his students’ lack of talent. Buchanan’s main occupation was as a window dresser for the Aug. W. Smith Company, one of the leading department stores in the northwest part of South Carolina. He held that position for twenty-six years. One of his greatest accomplishments was a display which featured eight shadow boxes depicting scenes from the famous poem by Clement Moore, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “The Night Before Christmas.”
Beginning in 1961 Buchanan served as the director of Walnut Grove Plantation, a position that lasted until his death in 1974. The property began as a land grant given by King George III to the Moore family, ultimately encompassing three thousand acres. Members of the family were active during the Revolutionary War and one of the daughters was a spy against the British. The home dates to 1765, and five years later a school building opened, the first in the county, functioning until 1850. The 1970 nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places—proposed during Buchanan’s tenure— asserts that “The Walnut Grove house, outbuildings, and furnishings provide a fully documented picture of life, and an example of social history in upcountry South Carolina prior to 1830. The house itself is considered one of the finest upcountry plantation houses of the period. … the recreation of such buildings as the smokehouse and blacksmith shop bring to life history.”
It was Buchanan’s vision which supplemented the original structures and brought such things as carved granite gates from the ruins of an old estate in Union County and a so-called “drover’s house” that served as a dwelling for the caretaker, presumably Buchanan, in 1970. He was also responsible for the interior décor and for drafting an interpretive script for volunteer guides. This script avoided addressing the brutality of slavery due to Buchanan's own defense of the plantation as a benevolent institution. Although the majority of information available details Buchanan’s Christmas dioramas for Aug. Smith or his dedicated work at Walnut Grove, he also painted local scenes, mostly in watercolors, that captured the regional activity of South Carolina.