William Tucker is an important name in St. John’s history. First was the young Captain William Tucker, who came to the new English colony of Virginia in 1610. Showing leadership ability, he was placed in charge of the settlement at Kecoughtan, which in 1620 he succeeded in renaming Elizabeth City after the daughter of King James I. As a member of the new House of Burgesses in Jamestown, he was also given the task of building a second church for the village. The Virginia Company required every settlement to have a church.
The second William Tucker was the first DOCUMENTED African child born in English-speaking North America, which was the colony of Virginia at that time. In 1619 a pirate ship, the White Lion, had docked at Point Comfort across the creek from the village, and its Captain Jobe had offered the cargo of “20 and odd Africans” to the settlers in exchange for “victuals,” or food and provisions and other goods for the return trip to England. Captain William Tucker took Anthony and Isabella to join his eleven English servants and one native servant. All were indentured, as slavery did not exist in the colony at that time. All were eventually freed, and Anthony and Isabella received land in the area of the present-day Blue Bird Gap Farm.
By 1624 a son was born to Anthony and Isabella, who named him William Tucker, for the Englishman who had given them a home. The baby, William Tucker, was baptized in the new church, the Elizabeth City Parish Church, the very church that Captain William Tucker had undertaken to build. It is very possible that Anthony and Isabella were also baptized there, as Christianity was known and practiced in Angola, their native land.
Four hundred years later the baby William Tucker has thousands of descendants, speculates Shelton Tucker, and he is one of them. Born as a military brat in Greenville, North Carolina, he grew up in Hampton and graduated from Bethel High School in 1976. After graduating from Tennessee State University in Nashville, he entered the business world. Working as a corporate executive in Atlanta, where he picked up an MBA at Atlanta University, and then as a banker in London, he met the head of Coca-Cola Africa, who offered him a job. Thus, he became the Finance Director of the Coca-Cola Africa Group, where he was in charge of acquisitions and mergers, as well as product distribution on the continent.
Working in London, as well as on the continent, Tucker lived and worked in some 16 of the 53 African nations at that time, especially Kenya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast and South Africa. He lived for two years in Johannesburg, where he was able to meet Nelson Mandela, and in Cape Town, which he says is a lovely city. In Johannesburg, he oversaw the opening of the first black-owned Coca-Cola bottling plant in South Africa. Coke, he says, has a different taste there as it is made with sugar cane, unlike that of the United States.
After retiring from Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Tucker decided some seven years ago to return to Hampton, where his family still owns a piece of that land. He is busy with genealogical work and is writing a book about the Tuckers. On his recent visit, Shelton Tucker especially enjoyed walking around St. John’s Second Site, which he knew that his ancestors, Anthony and Isabella, and the young William Tucker, also knew. He hopes to have his book in print by early 2020.
Originally published in St. John’s Newsletter, October 2019.