52 Ancestors - #2 John Tucker born January 29, 1828 - Hampshire, England

John (son of Isaac and Sarah Agnes Tucker) sailed to the East coast of America in November 1851 from London, England. He traveled across the country to try his luck in the California gold fields. He mined for 10 years but never earned more than $1.50 per day. John met Mary Hardesty (a descendant of Edward Carter Dingle) shortly after she arrived in Honey Lake, California in 1861. They married on January 21, 1862. He then purchased a farm in Susanville, Lassen County, California but irrigation was necessary and he disagreed with his neighbors on the terms for the distribution of water. John and Mary's first child (my great grandfather William John Tucker) was born nine months and nine days after their marriage while they lived in Susanville. John had two dreams, to go north to Canada to get back under British Rule and to buy a farm where God did the irrigating. He succeeded with the second dream in 1866 when he hewed his log home out of the wilderness of the Silver Creek area after two years of renting a farm on the Cowlitz Prairie in Washington Territory. At that time Silver Creek was a 2000 acre valley of fertile soil with no roads and very few clearings because the land was covered with a hardy growth of timber. For the first two years at the Silver Creek cabin it had no door - just a large and heavy canvas and then with the birth of each of the next six children he would add a room to the cabin. He never made it back to British territory as he was unable to convince his wife Mary to ford any more treacherous rivers after they had lost a team of horses and a wagon crossing the Cowlitz River near Toledo after their arrival in Washington Territory. The Silver Creek Post Office was established in his cabin on March 15, 1875 and he was postmaster for 22 years. The Post Office stayed in the Tucker family for 41 years. John was very enterprising and also kept a store in his home for over 25 years. During his life John also sent money to his family left in England.

Before the Silver Creek school was built in 1888, John hired a live-in tutor as was English custom to teach his children. John's son George Henry Tucker became a teacher, superintendent of schools and a state senator.  Three of his son James' daughters became teachers who taught a total of 93 years between them. Several other family members also became teachers. 

One of the Tucker cousins had the original letters from John's family in England from 1854 to 1910 and Hardesty letters from Nevada and California from 1869, and 1906-1914. There were also letters from 1855 to 1859 from John Tucker's brother Henry who followed him to America in 1855 but settled in New Bern, Craven County, North Carolina because he could not afford the trip across the plains to the West coast. Between 1999 and 2001 three of us (my first cousin Chris and my second cousin once removed Carole) transcribed the letters and followed up on the genealogy leads that they contained. I then made copies of the originals and transcriptions and had them bound into books about 2 inches thick for about 40 Tucker cousins interested in a copy. My cousin Carole compiled the genealogy information we had at the time on the Tucker, Hardesty and Dingle families and printed copies of that for the cousins.
  

John Tucker

January 29, 1828 to August 14, 1904