Tucker family papers

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

Captain Richard Holbrook Tucker, Jr. (1816-1895) was the son of Richard Hawley Tucker, Sr., and Mary (Mellus) Tucker (c 1788-1879) of Wiscasset, Maine. His education included the Wiscasset Academy, founded in 1807, a private academic high school. After finishing his studies in Wiscasset, Tucker went to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Tucker dropped out of college in March 1837 for reasons of poor health, ostensibly eyestrain, and returned to Wiscasset. Shortly after his return, he shipped aboard the "Othello" as an apprentice to the captain. Within eighteen months he was in command of the "Othello" and spent the next decade as a ship's captain. In 1848, he effectively cut himself loose from making regular Atlantic passages. Instead he based his operations in Charleston, South Carolina, and became the agent for the Tucker vessels, as well as organizing an agency for a line of packet ships, and participating in a number of other enterprises. In 1857, Captain Tucker married Mary Geraldine Armstrong (1841-1922) in Chicago. The couple moved into the former Silas Lee Mansion in Wiscasset the following year and made it their family home. At the time of their marriage, Captain Tucker was comfortably well off. Although he had been busy for several years pursuing a variety of business ventures, his prosperity was largely grounded on the skills and business connections his father had forged over the years as managing owner of a small fleet of ships engaged in the cotton trade. The Panic of 1857 and the American Civil War both had a deleterious effect on the cotton shipping business. Captain Tucker's other business ventures included operating some small coasting schooners, a pilot boat venture, and a long-term project to develop a new propulsion system for vessels that anticipated the modern pump-drive system. He also invested in enterprises in and around Wiscasset including logging, land investments, a large brickyard, railroads, and a quarry and farm. One of the most successful of these ventures involved a gold mining venture in Nova Scotia that came to involve lumbering and the operation of a general store. The multiplicity of Tucker enterprises as well as their geographic distribution was one source of weakness. Captain Tucker also does not seem to have had the same management skills as his father. This and other factors resulted in a number of high maintenance, high-cost and low-return enterprises that at times seriously depleted the family's resources.

Known as "Mollie," Mary Geraldine (Armstrong) Tucker (1841-1922) was the daughter of Joseph Armstrong and Mary Louisa (Carr) Armstrong. Mollie had grown up in Gardiner, Maine, where her parents ran a grand hotel. After her father's mental breakdown and subsequent death in 1850, she moved with her mother and sister to Chicago, where her mother ran a boarding house. During most of this time, Mollie boarded at St. Joseph's School in Emmitsburg, Maryland (1852-1856). Mollie was only sixteen when she married forty-one-year-old Captain Richard Tucker in 1857. The Tuckers had six children during their marriage, five of whom survived to adulthood: Mary Mellus Tucker (1858-1899), Richard Hawley Tucker, III (1859-1952), Martha Armstrong Tucker (1861-1893), William Armstrong Tucker (1864-1926), and Jane Armstrong Tucker (1866-1964). While her husband spent a fair amount of time away from Wiscasset managing various business ventures, Mollie was more closely confined to the home and the duties of housekeeping and childrearing. In the 1880s and 1890s, when the family's financial situation was especially strained, Mollie attempted to use her home as a source of income. She tried selling her homemade preserves, piccalilli, and apple pie filling. In the early 1890s Mollie and several of her adult children opened Castle Tucker to summer boarders, hoping to take advantage of Maine's growing tourist population. Like her husband's efforts, Mollie's also did little more than keep the family afloat.

Richard and Mollie Tucker's eldest child, Mary Mellus Tucker (1858-1900), also known as "Mame," went to a convent school in Whitfield (St. Joseph's) and a finishing school in Farmington, Maine. Mame returned to Wiscasset after she finished boarding school and developed a desire to become a professional actress, perhaps reflecting her long-time involvement with amateur theatricals. Her decision was not popular with her family, especially with her mother. Mame had a stage career for over twenty years during which she performed with several traveling companies, including the Buffalo Bill Combination during the 1882-1883 season. In April 1887, Mame married fellow actor Al Clayton; their marriage lasted five years. Mame died at age 42 while traveling on the road during a long string of performances with repertory companies.

Richard Hawley Tucker, III (1859-1952), also known as Dick, ultimately assumed a leadership role in the Tucker family, despite the fact that he moved farther away from his family home than the majority of the Tucker siblings. After attending several schools and spending about six months on a voyage to Liverpool, Richard started school at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1879. After graduation he was hired at the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, as an assistant observer. He spent several years at the observatory before accepting a position as assistant astronomer at the Argentine National Observatory in Cordoba. Richard returned to the United States in 1893 after completing his tour at Cordoba, and took a position at the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, California. In his fifties he married Ruth Standen, with whom he had two daughters, Jane Standen and Mary Ronald.

Martha Armstrong Tucker Stapleton, known as Patty, became the creative member of the family as a successful author, a recognized political reporter, and a leading spokesperson for the suffrage movement in Colorado. After going to school at The Willows and the Moravian Academy, she returned home to teach, help her family keep house, and do volunteer work. She also began writing and sending her stories to newspapers and magazines. After short stints in Boston and Albany, she ultimately settled in Denver, Colorado, where she became the society reporter for the "Denver Tribune" under the name Patience Thornton. In 1883, she married journalist William Stapleton at Castle Tucker. Patty continued to write for newspapers and magazines and published her first full-length novel, "Kady, A Colorado Story," in 1886 under the name Patience Stapleton. In the fall of 1893, she learned she had cancer. Her doctors recommended she have it removed at a private hospital in New York City, which she did, but she died two days after the surgery.

William Armstrong Tucker (1864-1824) attended several schools before finishing his formal education in 1881. After attending Folsom's Business College for a semester, he took a job with a local insurance agency. Within a year, he moved to Newark, New Jersey, and took a job at a leather goods firm owned by the family of a friend of his brother Dick. It was the beginning of pattern of moving from job to job, often with long gaps in between. Will did have the opportunity to see a good deal of America's west from the Great Plains to the Pacific coast, but he never appeared able to establish a stable career as had his brother or elder sisters. He married Elizabeth Mary Worth in 1893 and they had two children, Lois Patience (1893-1897) and Richard Harvey (1899-1975).

Jane Armstrong Tucker (1866-1964) had the longest history of residence at Castle Tucker and was dedicated to preserving her family home and its contents. Like her siblings, she attended a number of schools somewhat irregularly; she concluded her formal education with a year at St. Joseph's for "finishing." Jane pursued a number of careers as an adult, including over two years of work at the Art Exchange and R. H. Stearns (where she painted decorative items, made custom embroidered buttons, and gave lessons in needlework and painting). Some of her other occupations included working at Vantine's (an import firm that popularized Japanese decorative items), taking shorthand, travelling as a saleswoman for the McCalls pattern company, and helping her mother run the summer boarding business in their home. After she returned to live permanently at Castle Tucker, Jane looked to the family house for support. She opened Castle Tucker as a tourist home, farmed the land, and raised squab for the luxury market. Upon the death of her mother in 1922, Castle Tucker became the property of Jane Armstrong Tucker, who maintained it until her death in 1964. Her niece and namesake Jane Standen Tucker, daughter of eldest son Richard, moved to the family home near the end of her aunt's life and served as its steward for over thirty years.

Sources

Historic New England research files