John Richard Allen Tucker
Information about the family and relatives of John R A is based purely on family tradition and is not supported by any legal evidence. By contrast the adult life of John R A is well documented from a variety of records. According to family tradition John R A first met his wife in 1841. Her family had just moved to Pinetta in Madison Co., Fla from Clayettesville, Lowndes Co, GA where Sarah had been born the 16th of Nov., 1827. When they met she was running an errand stark barefooted eating a piece of beefsteak between halves of a biscuit. Her bare feet embarrassed her as did her being seen eating between meals like a child. John R A laughed at her embarrassment which didn’t help matters any. She made up her mind about him, that she didn’t like him at all! But her parents were impressed by John R A, especially the step-mother, who never ceased trying to change Sarah’s mind about him. She would say ‘You marry John Tucker’ or ‘Do you want to do well for yourself? Then marry John Tucker!’ It seems likely that John R A was in Madison Co. because of Elijah Ross Tucker, the man who raised his sister Julia Ann. There can be no doubt that these two lines are closely related. On the 20th of Nov. 1845, John Richard Allen Tucker and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Starling were married in Madison Co., Fla. Their marriage record still exists and is the first piece of legal evidence on our Tucker line. Levi Starling, the man who raised Sarah, performed the marriage. Family tradition says that her father was William J Starling and this may be true, because there was a Wm J Starling in the 1820 Lowndes Co., GA census. The man who raised her, however, was Levi, the son of William Starling. He was born the 1st of May, 1805 and died November the 4th, 1883. His known children were; William Rowan, Roxanna, John Berrien, Caroline, Susannah, Thomas C, Washington C, Jane, Martha Ann, James A, Alexander M, Levi Valentine, and Anne E Starling. There can be no doubt that this was Sarah’s family. William Rowan was her only full brother and he sister Mary Ann, like she had left home before 1850 and were forgotten. Our family tradition names Mary Ann, Sarah Ann, Martha Ann, Roxie Ann, Susie, Ann, Georgia Ann, William Rowan, and John Berrien as the children of William J Starling. Change Georgia Ann to Carol Ann (both are the names of states) and you have named most of the known children of Levi Starling. When the grandson of Levi Valentine Starling married a descendent of John R A Tucker, they knew that they were cousins.
By 1848 Levi Starling had moved back to Lowndes County, Georgia and although it is no longer remembered, John R A also moved there with him. His first son, William Andrew Tucker was born there April 12th, 1848. His second son too, our ancestor Richard Franklin Tucker was born there Oct 17th, 1851. Their birth places are recorded in the 1850 Lowndes and 1860 New River cos censuses. By 1853, John R A and his family had moved to Lake Butler, Fla which is presently in Union co, Fla. His brothers-in-law Wm Rowan and John Berrien Starling also moves there with him. It was here that most of the children of John and Sarah were born. Levi Jonathan was born May 6th, 1857 and Mary Frances was born in 1858. The last child to be born before John R A left to go to war was Julia Moselle Tucker; born May 21st 1861.
When the Civil War began in 1861, it took the southern states some months to organize. Finally the call for soldiers came and John R A waited just long enough to put his family in the care of a neighborhood doctor before going to join the Confederate Army. On March 8th, 1862 he enlisted for three years at Gainesville, Alachua County, Florida. He was assigned to Captain Thomas’ company, 7th Regiment Fla Infantry. Family tradition says that he served in company ‘C’ but the war records show that it was company ‘A’. Shouldering his gun, John R A left for what proved to be a very long war. For a while Sara A E made out fine. Two slaves John R A had inherited from his fathers’ plantation took care of the field chores with the help of the boys. Sarah’s negro mammy Mary and another slave helped in the house to do the cleaning, cooking, spinning and a thousand other chores. Meanwhile the war went well for John R A. On July 18th he was field commissioned 2nd Sgt. This new rank at times took him far afield. On the 2nd of Dec he was sent to Knoxville, Tennessee carrying some supplies. He arrived there the 19th of May 1863 and turned in 10 Enfield rifles, 11 cartridge boxes, 11 cap boxes, 11 waist belts, 3 bayonets, 2 scabbards and 3 gun slings. On July 13th, he was promoted to 1st Sergeant. This took its toll, however, a few months later, for he spent the rest of the year sick in the Flewellen Hospital at Cassville, Georgia.
About this time, things began to go badly on the farm also. Emily Jane had been born that year and the Union Army near Ft. Myers and St. Augustine was causing the farmers and cattlemen trouble. An embargo was declared against Florida and the North had declared all slaves free. With the men gone to war it was impossible to hold those who wanted to leave. Among those who left were some of the Tuckers’ slaves; particularly the younger ones. Sara A E and one of the house slaves had to work out in the fields with William A and Richard, leaving all of the housework to poor old Mary and the girls. Things began to get scarce and people had to live completely off of their own farms. For a brief time in December, John R A returned and spent Christmas at home. It must have been a joyful yet sad reunion with him seeing the plight of his family and all of them knowing that he must soon leave again. On that early January 1864, he left to return to his command, but didn’t make it. Instead he checked into the Walker Hospital in Columbus, Georgia, still very sick. From this time on things went from bad to worse.
On the farm the salt soon ran out and there was none to buy. In the Florida heat, this was a deadly problem. Sarah A E had heard that the floors of the plantation smokehouses were being boiled and the salt distilled from the dirt. No one could be spared from the fields, so she and Mary, her negro mammy, began spading the smokehouse dirt and carrying it in buckets to the sugar kettle. They filled half the kettle with dirt and the other half with water. As the water got hot the salt dissolved into it. It was then dipped out of the kettle and boiled away leaving a little bit of salt. Day after day they would dig, carry and boil until it seemed as if they could never lift a foot again. All this for just a taste of salt and there were so many that needed it. In all there were about 19 people who needed that salt. But the distilling process took so long that things just kept getting farther and farther behind. Both Sarah’s children and those of the negroes were in bad need of clothes. Eliza Ann had been kept spinning more hours than was good for her, but still it was not enough. Sarah A E threaded the loom when she wasn’t making salt, and mammy Mary helped spin when she wasn’t cooking. In the day Sarah helped in the fields and at night she wove the thread that had been spun that day. And so it went on and on, a never ending round of toil.
John R A had been listed as deserted. When he hadn’t shown up for duty in mid-January, he was listed AWOL and declared deserter on the 21st. During this time he was in the hospital, but since there was no real means of communication, no one knew. Finally on the 30th of March he was sent back to his command. At first it must have been quite a surprise for both John R A and his commander when he returned to duty. But he retained his rank so things must have been worked out. Within a few months began the famous Union march which broke the back of the South. General Sherman, with his forces began a sweep through the south the Atlantic Ocean. On his way through, nothing was spared; farms and municipal building alike were all torched. Livestock, industry, crops; all were burned or destroyed. On July 22nd, 1864, John R A and those with him were captured near Atlanta, Georgia. They were sent to a prison camp in Louisville, Kentucky, where after two days they were transferred on the 31st of July to Camp Chase, Ohio. John R A arrived there by rail on the 4th of the next month. Tradition says he was in a New Jersey prison, but the records show Ohio. It was a cold winter and John R A suffered many hardships from it. The prison was furnished scarcely half the blankets that it needed. The ears, nose, hands, and feet of John R A were severely frostbitten; so much so that they were scarred for the rest of his life, as if from a recent burn. It is a miracle that he was able to survive that winter, since he had just recently been sick for over 6 months.
Finally, the war ended and on March 4th, 1865 John R A and 3498 other confederate prisoners headed to City Point, Virginia, near the James River. Here they took the oath of allegiance and were paroled between the 10th and 12th of that month. John R A had 27 cents in postage stamps which furnished food for him and those with him. They rode a freight train to Virginia and from there they walked. 
Back home news of John R A’s capture had drifted in and when the war ended, Sarah A E counted the days until he would be home. But weeks passed and he didn’t return. Other planters or their sons had come back and still no word from John R A. Sarah tried to seem happy for the children’s sake, but they could tell she was worried. The two slaves John R A had inherited, one who had seen him grow up and the other who had grown up with him, both helped cheer Sarah up. ‘There hasn’t a thing happened to young Marse’ they’d say ‘No, sir, young Miss, not anything going to happen to young Marse John. God got need of every Tucker he can get hold of right here in this Southland to help patch things up and show us poor fellows how to get along.’ And so they talked to keep up her courage as well as their own, for Sarah knew that without their old master to lean on, they were afraid to face this new freedom that had come to them overnight. Finally on June 24th, 1865 John R A come home. He had fared better than thousands of soldiers who had tramped back into the South that spring, but no more pitiful creature ever hobbled back into the county than he. His ragged clothes hung on him as if on a scarecrow. His face and hands were cooked from the hot sun. But the most touching thing of all was his feet. They as well as the back of his hands and the edges of his ears, had been frostbitten in the cold prison. His long walk from Virginia had worn the shoes off of his feet. Because of their sore condition other soldiers tramping along with him asked at farmhouses for bandages with which to wrap them. The bandages when wrapped tight and smooth gave good wear. But John R A couldn’t walk very fast in them. So group after group of soldiers left him and others came along to take their place. Between those times, he walked alone. One day he stopped at a plantation to ask for a drink of water. An ex-slave, seeing his bandaged feet, asked him in; but being sensitive about them sat on the steps instead. The negro excused himself and went inside. Soon he returned with the water and the negro’s former owner came out carrying a sewing basket. From it she took a new pair of socks hand knitted from strong homespun thread. Telling the negro to measure his feet for length, she began cutting soles from a discarded felt table runner. Sewing several of these soles together, she soon had a quarter inch thick sole for each of the socks. These she sewed to the socks. Then taking strong tent cloth, she cut other soles for strength; stitching, quilting, whipping them to the socks’ felt bottoms. When she had added bands under the heel of each one to tie up around the ankle, John R A felt that he almost had a new pair of shoes. He was still wearing them when he stumbled into the yard that June. His homecoming set the world straight for everyone there. Sarah A E wasn’t even downhearted about the frostbites; she would soon have them well. Although they did soon heal, the scars on his hands and ears never disappeared completely. Soon everything began to smooth out. Most of those slaves who had left, came back and although there was no money, the land still yielded cotton, corn, fruits and the other necessities of life. It seemed as if the old days would return, but they never did. The farms were too run down and all Confederate soldiers were disfranchised from voting. Carpetbaggers united with flighty negroes, trying to take farms away from their owners. Things got so bad it wasn’t safe for women and children to be alone. Terrible things were happening in Bradford County. A few established families packed up and left but John R A hung on, hoping for better times. However things grew steadily worse instead of better, and at last John R A, charging the negroes to stay close to his family day and night, rode with a friend down the state. He found Fort Christmas, bought all of it he wanted from the state and after leasing his plantation to his good friend and neighbor John Croft, he moved his family south. In 1866 they left North Florida and headed for Fort Christmas. They came in covered wagons drawn by oxen and drove several head of cattle. One night they camped at Lake Weir and were attacked by wolves; but after killing several of the pack the others retreated into the forest. They settled near Fork Christmas where only two or three small clearings showed that someone other than the Indians had tried to live there. At first they intended to stay only two or three years until things got better in North Florida. The negroes had been left on the plantation. It was their home and they would not be molested by the carpetbaggers or freedom crazed negroes. There was no use uprooting their lives. Mammy Mary went to the home of John Croft. It was only temporary, or so they thought. The year after they moved to Fort Christmas, Emily Jane died and was buried there. Also that year on January 31st 1867, Amanda Arabella was born. Two years later things had settled down enough in the northern counties so that they could have moved back, but Sarah would not leave Emily Jane’s grave until Fort Christmas had grown into an established community. That wouldn’t take long, they figured, and already two or three men who had followed them there, fleeing the lawlessness of North Florida were talking of staying permanently. Meanwhile John R A was becoming prosperous. The land was rich and he had all kinds of it: low lands for cane and rice, hammocks for oranges (which were quite a novelty and venture at the time), and the whole part of lower Florida was a pasture for his cattle and hogs. He sold syrup, sugar and rice for ready cash. People were unsettled and restless, drifting into the area and leaving. Often they didn’t want to drive their cattle any further. John R A began buying these until he had more cattle then he could sell. His home was a kind of stopping place for travelers, so he had the opportunity to become acquainted with almost everyone who came and went through the region. His nearest neighbor, Mr. Albert Roberts lived 11 miles away. At last John and Sarah decided that it would be better for them to stay in Fort Christmas than to move back north. They would well their plantation and bring the older negroes back to Fort Christmas with them. The others could choose for themselves whether to come or stay. The settlers in Christmas, however, strongly resisted any negroes being brought there. Many had suffered at the hands of the carpetbaggers and the frenzy-eyed negroes they had taken in. How strongly the people felt about this John R A didn’t know, so the next Sunday after services, he asked the men what their feelings were? This was easy to do since, there being no church building, the services were held in his house until one could be built. He explained that some of his negroes were getting old and that their place was with him. They had always looked to him for everything and he asked the men what they felt about his bringing them to Fort Christmas? There was an uproar, and they stood solidly together against him. There would be no ex-slaves at Fort Christmas. Sarah marked this as a victory against Yankees in general. Now John R A felt that he should have brought them with him when he first came; but it was too late and he would have to honor his neighbors’ decision. John R A and Sarah A E left for Bradford County (later to become Union County) where he gave a strip off the plantation to each of the older, faithful negroes. The younger ones each got a piece of wild land and he sold the rest to John Croft. Old mammy Mary was real sick, so Sarah stayed to tend her after John R A returned home. Two weeks later, Mary died, and the last strong ties to North Florida ended. About that time, the last child, John Harris Tucker was born march 28th, 1870 in Orange County, Florida and Fort Christmas officially became the new home of the Tuckers. But that is another history.