Appendix F: The Death of John Abraham Tucker

Stephen Anderson Keck (my great-grandfather) married Salinda Frances Tucker. She was the daughter of Robert S. Tucker who was the son of John Abraham Tucker. Many accounts exist of how John Abraham Tucker and his friend Joseph Burke were killed. They all differ in many details but agree that they were murdered by either confederate soldiers or bushwhackers (confederate guerrillas). The version given here is from the book Fading Memories by Sam Steele (1897-1989; he was a descendant of Joseph Burkes).

"My mother was a Burks, Mary Burks. Her dad, my mothers dad, got killed by bushwhackers, him and another feller, Joe Burks and John Tucker. They shot em offa their horses up there on Kings River. They had been to Kingston, them and their boys, and started back home. And them boys wanted to go to some house over there and rob some bee hives somebody had. The men told them they wasnt going to have nothing to do with it; theyd just go on home. So, they got over on Kings River and the bushwhackers was layin and waitin for em and shot them both off their horses. The boys, I dont know whether they robbed the bees or not, but they went on home; and the women, they had to go and build a rail fence around em [the men's bodies] that night to keep the hogs off of them. So they had to go bury em the women did. The boys was afraid to get around close, afraid theyd [the bushwhackers] get them, you know. They took a yoke of oxen and hauled em up there to the Bollingers settlement. Theres a little cemetery there, and they dug a grave and buried them both in the same grave. They just put em down in there. Nobody never had put em up a head rock, till me and my sister and one of my cousins, Howie Burks from Springdale, bought one. But we didnt know what to put on it, didnt have no dates and so on, so we set it up over there and put on it, Killed by Bushwhackers and buried by their women."