[ALS] Commodore Samuel Tucker Explains to Samuel Thatcher That He has Promised the Materials for the Biographical Sketch of His Life to Moses Shaw

Bremen [ME], 1829. Very good, folded, minor punctures and soiling along margins, remnants to verso, contents clean.. 1 sheet. 7.5 x 8.5 inches. Dated and signed August 12th, 1829. by [Commodore] Samuel Tucker who writes to Samuel Thatcher, following a visit from Thatcher's sons, George and Benjamin, who had expressed interest in writing a biography on Tucker's life. Tucker tells Thatcher, "I must say I am heartily sorry, I gave them any encouragement but the moment must be alleged to my imbecility, as I had heretofore declared ever having any such manuscript, go to the press, for such a thing if ever it was to be done, Doctor Moses Shaw has a great claim on me for it..."

Tucker had, at some point, submitted a series of papers to Doctor Shaw, of Wiscasset, Maine,; however they had been destroyed in a fire before anything was published. Fortunately, Tucker's grandson, Colonel Samuel Tucker Hinds was in possession of copies of Tucker's logs, journals, and letters, and left them to Harvard Library. Harvard released them to John Hannibal Sheppard, who, published "The Life of Samuel Tucker: Commodore in the American Revolution" in 1868.

Samuel Tucker (1747-1833), naval officer and merchant mariner from Marblehead, "who never learned the social graces...first went to sea in the summer of 1760 at the age of twelve, during the Seven Years' War."... In 1776 George Washington appointed Tucker captain and commander of the Franklin ...an armed schooner commissioned in the Continental army "to prey on transports supplying the Royal Army at Boston. A few months later Tucker transferred to the schooner Hancock... the two schooners participated in the capture of fourteen enemy vessels."

He transported John Adams to France and Adams judged Tucker to be "a brave, active, vigilant officer" but of "no great Erudition" ... In his ship "Boston" and others he participated in the capture of at least forty-one vessels and was captured and paroled twice. After the war, he lost his money and moved to Maine, in 1792 living as a farmer. He was representative for Bristol in the Massachusetts legislature in 1798-1800 and 1814-1818. During the war of 1812I he commanded "a makeshift privateer, a coasting sloop called Increase, manned by forty-seven volunteers, which they fitted out to get rid of an armed British schooner that had been raiding in the neighborhood. On the third day out, in Muscongus Bay, the Increase encountered the Crown, an armed schooner of one carriage gun and thirty-five men, which surrendered after an exchange of gunfire" (American National Biography).

Samuel Thatcher (1776-1872) graduated from Harvard University in 1793, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1797, was member of the Massachusetts House, 1801-1811, was elected as a Federalist to the Seventh Congress, reelected to the Eighth Congress, and member of the Maine House in 1824. (See Biographical Dictionary of Congress)

Moses Shaw (1785-1847) of Wiscasset, Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College (1818), a member of the their Athenaean Society, was a doctor, and also a lecturer at the College and later at Harvard (1836); he was later appointed collector of the port.

References: John Hannibal Sheppard: "The Life of Samuel Tucker: Commodore in the American Revolution" (Boston: Alfred Mudge, 1868); ANB: doi.org/10.1093/anb/ 9780198606697. article.0300503; Biographical Dictionary of Congress: bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/T000143; Philip Chadwick Foster Smith: "Captain Samuel Tucker (1747-1833), Continental Navy" (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1976).