Skip to main content

Author: Tucker, St. George

Biography:

TUCKER, St. George (1752-1827: ANBO)

Born near Port Royal, Bermuda, he was the youngest child of Col. Henry Tucker, a merchant and plantation owner, and his wife Anne Butterfield, daughter of Bermuda's Chief Justice. He was sent to the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1771 to study law, but his education was interrupted by the Revolutionary War, during which St. George returned temporarily to Bermuda and the Tuckers sold arms to the American forces. In 1778 he married a young widow, Frances (Bland) Randolph, and retired to the Randolph plantation in Chesterfield County VA. They had five children, two of whom followed their father into distinguished legal careers. Tucker was called to the bar and made commonwealth's attorney for the county in 1783; later he was appointed a judge of the General Court. After the death of his first wife in 1788, he married (1791) another widow, Lelia (Skipworth) Carter; they had three children but all died young. Besides legal judgments and reports, he wrote pamphlets on political and social issues, notably a Dissertation on Slavery (1796) proposing gradual abolition. Following a period as Professor of Law at William and Mary (1790-1803), he published an edition of Blackstone's Commentaries (5 vols. 1803) with commentary and with a set of his own lectures on aspects of the law appended, for the use of students. He served as a US District Court judge from 1813 to 1825, when he retired on account of ill health. He died at the home of his step-daughter Mary Cabell near Warminster VA. (ANBO 27 Nov. 2020; ancestry.com 27 Nov. 2020; findagrave.com 27 Nov. 2020)

 

Books written (3):

New York: the Printing Office, 1786
Richmond [VA]: printed by Aug. Davis, 1788
Philadelphia: Benj. Franklin Bache, 1796