Mildred Buxton, Countess Buxton
Mildred Anne Buxton, Countess Buxton,, was a British social activist and philanthropist.
Biography
Buxton was born in St George Hanover Square, London, the daughter of Hugh Colin Smith of Mount Clare, London, and Constance Maria Josepha. She was baptised 23 July 1866 Saint Thomas Church in Portman Square, Westminster.She married politician Sydney Buxton, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in 1896, and had three children. She was active in social work when her husband was Governor-General of South Africa from 1914 to 1920. 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.
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.
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 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 and a daughter.The Buxtons had three children: a twin daughter and son in 1897 and a daughter in 1910.
- 2nd Lt. Hon. Denis Bertram Sydney Buxton, killed in the First World War
- Lady Doreen Maria Josepha Sydney Buxton, 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, 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, married Ven. Peter Charles Eliot, the Archdeacon of Worcester