San Francisco County
Biographies
WILLIAM WADSWORTH TUCKER
WILLIAM WADSWORTH TUCKER, painter,
wood finisher and house decorator of Oakland, was born in Mercer, Somerset
County, Maine, March 8, 1854, a son of Josiah Wadsworth
and Mary Ann (Gordon) Tucker, both natives of Maine and
now deceased, the mother in Maine at the age of
thirty-five of acute disease, the father in Oakland
in March, 1889, age sixty-one. The mother left four children, two sons two
daughters, of whom a brother and a sister of our subject are still living in
Oakland; Charles Albert, a painter with his brother, our subject, and Helen,
now Mrs. Garcelon, Grandfather Simeon Gordon, a farmer of Maine, lived to be
eighty-four. Grandfather Tucker (Rev. Josiah), a Congregational minister of Taunton,
Massachusetts, at his death aged about seventy, was of
the Tucker family of Milton, Massachusetts.
They are of the English immigration to Massachusetts.
The father was a soldier in the nineteenth Maine Volunteer Infantry, enlisting
in 1862 as a Sergeant, was discharged as a Captain in 1865. After service he worked for the United States Goverernment as a builder in Nashville,
Tennessee. About 1867 he engaged in
painting in Boston Massachusetts, then at Lewiston Maine, four or five years,
and came thence to California with our subject, settling in Oakland, in the
same line as his son (our subject), under the style of J.W. Tucker & Son.
The business has grown to good proportions, employing about fourteen men. There
has been no change in style since his father’s death. Our subject received a
common- school education and entered his father’s shop in Boston
in 1869, and remained with him until his death, and now continues the business.
He is a Lieutenant in the California Division Sons of Veterans.
Mr.
Tucker was married in Oakland in 1881 to Mrs. Miranda (Ames)
Williams, a native of New York State,
who had two children, Grace and Gertrude. Grandmother Ames
is living, in 1891, aged about sixty-two. The brother of our subject came out
in 1882; learned the business with his father and brother in Oakland.
He was married in this city, in July, 1870 to Miss. Grace Rouse, a native of California.
Transcribed by Kim Buck.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages
615-616, Lewis Publishing
Co, 1892.
© 2006 Kim Buck.
California
Biography Project
San Francisco
County
California
Statewide
Golden
Nugget Library