Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker

Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.
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John Randolph Tucker




JAMES HENRY ROCHELLE, the author of the following pages, and the subject of this sketch, was of French-English and Celtic, or Scotch-Irish, extraction—English through his paternal great-grandmother, who was the daughter of Hinchia Gilliam, and his wife (née) Harrison; Scotch-Irish through his maternal ancestry. The name itself proclaims its French (Huguenot) origin.
It is well known that when Louis XIV revoked the edict of Nantes many French Protestants, called Huguenots, fled from their homes to escape persecutions worse than death. About forty thousand took refuge in England, and in 1690 William III sent a number of them to America. A party of them made their way up the James river and made a settlement, which they called Mannakintown, or Manacan, because the lands formerly belonged to the Manacan Indians. Feeling that they no longer had to defend themselves against oppression and cruelty, and that in a free country their religion was no stigma, the characteristics of the race came out. With order and work Manacan became a flourishing town. Among those who had made a temporary home there was John Rochelle, who came with the other Huguenot exiles, and, if Pope be right, he soon enjoyed
All the joys of sense— Health, peace and competence.
But in a few years the spirit of discord entered among these exiles, who had found peace, liberty and homes. The three Rochelle brothers sought other homes; William settled in North Carolina, James went to South Carolina, and John bought of William and Jonas Longbottom two hundred and twelve acres of land on the south side of the Nottoway river in the then parish of Albemarle. Here he lived, and married Mary Gilliam, daughter of Hinchia Gilliam and his wife (née) Harrison. They had issue four sons—John, Levi, Hinchia and Nathaniel. John, the oldest son, married his cousin, Judith Gilliam, famed for her beauty, and they became the parents of nine children—Benjamin, John, Willis, Clements, Elizabeth (who will live in history as the mother of the famous soldier, George Henry Thomas), James, Lucy, and Mary.