By Anderson Chenault Quisenberry
The Lexington Herald
April 21, 1907
"Joseph T. Tucker was born in Boston, Mass., in 1824, the son of Dr. Eben Tucker and Mary White Hunt, his wife. Dr. Tucker was educated at Harvard University, and was a leading physcian in Boston; his wife was a descendant of Peregrine White, who came to America in the Mayflower, in 1620. Joseph T. Tucker was educated at Yale University and soon after graduation went to Kentucky and settled in Winchester to practice law. There he married Miriam Hood, daughter of Dr. Andrew Hood, one of the most famous physcians that ever lived in Kentucky. At that time there were fifteen lawyers at the Winchester bar and it is said that all of them were Whigs except Mr. Tucker and Charles Eginton, who were States Rights Democrats. After his capture in the Ohio raid, Colonel Tucker was imprisoned in the Ohio penitentiary, but was afterwards taken to Fort Delaware. From this place he was taken on June 26, 1864, in company with fifty other Confederate officers, and place on the steamer "Dragoon" to be carried to Charleston, S.C., to be placed within range of the Confederate guns, in retaliation, for the act of Confederates in placing Union officers in points of danger while that city was under fire of the Union army. But after being kept prisoners on the "Dragoon" for five weeks, Colonel Tucker and his companions were exchanged, and he entered active service again under General John C. Breckinridge in West Virginia, and served there until the war closed, in command of what then was called the "kentucky Battalion." At the close of the war he led his men through the mountains of kentucky to Mt. Sterling, where he surrendered on May 1, 1865. Being debarred from practicing law in Kentucky on account of having served in the Confederate army, he went to Georgia, where he remained until 1869, when his disabilities having been removed, he returned to Winchester and resumed the practice of law. He served as County Attorney for Clark county, and in 1871-72 he represented the county in the State Legislature, where he was recognized as one of the ablest members of that body. He died in Winchester on September 28, 1906, in his eighty-third year. His wife and two children, Miss Nanie Tucker and Mr. Hood Tucker, survive him."
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