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George Daniel Tucker page 1 or 1
George Daniel Tucker, listed as George E. Tucker, Cedar Rest Cemetery, SI2-43.
The following is information regarding the life of George Daniel Tucker, part of a transcribed audio-taped interview of James William Watts, Jr., of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, when he was 91 years old. Mr. Watts recalls stories involving his father, James William Watts, Sr. The stories were recorded in July 1999 at the Watts home on Watts Bayou, 2214 Washington Street.
George Daniel Tucker (called Dan) was a former Indian Scout who lived in a shanty and in a houseboat on what is now Watts Bayou. Originally from Iowa, he arrived in Mississippi around 1880, liked the area and bought part of the old Esterbrook tract on what was then Bayou Galere.
In the following, the quoted passages are in Mr. Watts? words.
?General Custer wanted Mr. Tucker to be a scout for him for his next battle and Mr. Tucker said, ?No, General.? He said, ?You don?t want to fight this battle.? He said, ?That?s Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and they just have more men than the American Army can handle.? He was scouting for the American Army. So, Mr. Tucker just left, but Custer continued and the world knows now what happened at Little Big Horn and that was really bad.?
?Mr. Tucker was a man with a long white beard and my father called him Dad. And Mr. Tucker didn?t resent that even though he had been Indian scout and was supposed to mean. He was never mean to us....? He helped people who brought their boats up the bayou and eventually people started liking him.
When Mr. Tucker lived in Bay St. Louis he was in the salvage business. ?He salvaged wrecked boats. After the hurricanes or storms went through, he would go out in his boat. He had a big old sloop-rigged barge that he sailed in and he went out in that to where these wrecks might be- to Chandeleur Islands or Britt Islands. He would go by himself and salvage this stuff - knowing they were abandoned.?
?Mr. Tucker, he didn?t row his skiff, he sculled it. Those old time sailors did.... Somehow he was able to do that. It was about an 18 or 20 foot skiff and he had a sculling oar that was about ten feet and he had that in something like an oar lock on the stern of the skiff and of course the motion that he used that he could make the boat travel along even in the face of gale winds.?
?Old Mr. Tucker stayed out on his houseboat on the bayou during the 1915 hurricane. He died sometime around 1920. When he died my father said, ?Well, he?s an old friend and he?s by himself. We?ll take him down and we?ll have him buried in our burial plot.? And he?s still there. I don?t think he?s moved.?
In 2008 it is difficult to estimate Mr. Tucker?s age at the time of his death. Mr. Watts, Senior, who was bom in 1856, called him Dad, so he probably was at least 20 years older than Mr. Watts. This would mean that he was born by 1836. Based on this, at the time of his death in about 1920, he would have been at least 84.
Submitted to the Hancock County Historical Society by Bill and Beatty Watts, Nov. 16, 2008