William E. Tucker [Grampa's Dad] Family
William E. Tucker was born in Shelby County [Alabama] on January 12, 1884 to James T. and Rose Ann Tucker. He was the grandson of James A. Tucker, who was fighting with the Confederate Army somewhere in South Carolina. He contacted pneumonia and died in 1863. When William E. was 20 years of age he married Mattie Jane Messer on December 24, 1904. They had 3 children - two boys and one girl.
On October 20, 1913 William E. moved with his family to Chambers County [Alabama], where Mrs. Tucker died of tuberculosis in a small tenant house on the property of Emmet Workman in November, 1914.
From the time William E. moved to Chambers County until his wife died he supplied the residents of River View and Langdale with farm produce --- milk, butter, eggs, poultry, pork & beef and whatever vegetables that were in season. His rolling curb market was a small covered wagon drawn by a Texas Pony.
Soon after his wife died, he began to sell wood for burning in the cook stoves and fireplaces in the Fairfax Mill Village. In 1918 he moved into a mill house on Bailey Street in Fairfax.
The original plans for the Fairfax mill houses called for 300 houses. Perhaps two-thirds of them had been completed. William E. helped grade the lots (house sites) for the remaining third. He also ploughed the garden plots, hauled the stones that were used to build the curbs that lined the streets, and worked on other projects. He hauled the young oak tees and helped set them along the streets and around the mill. Many of them are still there now (1998). They are great oaks 80 or more years old.
After a 2-year stay on a farm, he came back to Fairfax and began to
deliver ice and coal to the employees of Fairfax Mill. He held this job for
several years, then worked for the West Point Manufacturing Company’s Service
Division, where he supervised the caring for the yards and shubbery for the
three lower towns, Fairfax, Langdale and River View. He held this job until he
retired in 1949. The second son, William R. Tucker [Grampa],
was the only one that stayed
in Chambers County. All three children finished high school in Fairfax. William
R. went to work in Fairfax Mill in August, 1927, where he was employed as
Yarn Dyer. He retired from the same department in 1994 after forty-seven and
one-half years. The last 20 of these years he was Department Overseer.
In 1928 he married Bama Hall, also of Fairfax. They had 2 sons. Both
finished high school at Valley High.After a short time in the army, the older
son, Chester R., was employed by the West Point Pepperell company in Electronics in the
Engineering & Research Department in Shawmut, Alabama. The younger son,
William Lee, served twenty plus years in the [United States] Air Force.
The Tucker family is proud to call Chambers County our home for over eighty-five years.
William R. Tucker, October 10, 1998
Copyright © 1998, Rev. William R. Tucker | All Rights Reserved