User:Toepoet/Beverley Dandridge Tucker

Beverley Dandridge Tucker (1846-1930) was born in Richmond, Virginia. He was the son of Nathaniel Beverley Tucker and Jane Shelton (Ellis) Tucker and is descended from a long line of American ancestors of English descent, the first American progenitor of which was one George Tucker of County Kent, England, who emigrated to Bermuda about the year 1619. His descendant, lawyer and judge St. George Tucker, moved from Bermuda to Virginia in about 1770. His home was the famous St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg. Beverley Dandridge Tucker studied law and then medicine but found neither to his liking. He then entered the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia. There he found his life's work. Tucker became a minister of the Episcopal Church and eventually Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia which geographically encompasses Colonial Williamsburg. In 1905 Tucker delivered a sermon on the Continuity of the Life of the Church in a service inaugurating the restoration of the interior of Bruton Parish Church to its colonial form and appearance.

The Rev. Tucker married Anna Maria Washington (1851-1927), the last of the Washington line to be born at Mount Vernon. They had 13 children two of which are F. Bland Tucker, Episcopal minister and hymn composer and Henry St. George Tucker, the 19th presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Among the accolades Bishop Tucker received in his lifetime are an honorary degree from the College of William and Mary (previous recipients included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), and a plaque in Bruton Parish in Williamsburg that reads: "To the Glory of God and in memory of Beverley Dandridge Tucker, a bishop of the Diocese of Southern Virginia 1906-1930, this North Gallery formerly the slaves' or servants' gallery has been restored by Letitia Pate Evans in recognition of his lifelong work among the negro people."