Frederick William Tucker (c1887)
This is a photo of my grandfather Frederick William Tucker taken after his adoption into the Tucker family, he was possibly about 5 years old in this photo, he was always of fine build.
The letter describing his mother and Fred to prospective adopters is lost, but Fred’s children, Ruth and Max, and Fred’s wife Mary said it described his mother Elizabeth Ann as impoverished and sick, unable to care for her children, and ‘no better than she should be’, and that the little boy Fred was ‘good at his numbers’.
Fred was born on 13 September 1882, ‘near McCulloch and Company’s Saw Mill’, in East Echuca, known as ‘Shinbone Alley’. His parents Ah Kew and Elizabeth Ann Butler already had four other children together, all born at Castlemaine: George (11 December 1870, Moonlight Flat), Edward (8 July 1872), Charlotte Mary (8 December 1874), and Arthur (10 July 1876), before they married on 18 August 1876.
Fred was fortunate to have been adopted by the Tuckers, a kindly Methodist family who owned land in the Mallee at Tyrrell Creek. They gave him a stable and comfortable life, unlike his siblings who were removed from their parents and worked as farm labourers due to their poverty and upbringing. Later, his father Ah Kew’s status is unknown, but his mother recovered from her illness and reclaimed her children, though she left Fred with the Tuckers as he was happy with them. They kept in touch.
During WWI, Fred enlisted in 1916 and served with the 8th Battalion. He was wounded in France and sent to England to recover and was invalided home to Australia in 1918. In WWII, he again enlisted, where as an experienced combatant (and my Dad said also because he looked ‘Japanese’) he was a guard at the Prisoner-of-War camps at Myrtleford.
Initially Fred was a land owner, but after the Depression, he opened a blacksmith’s, later a motor garage and Riley sales outlet. He died in 1950.
Paula Herlihy
Source of image: Tucker / Paula Herlihy
Creator: Carte de Visite, from the Vincent Family Bible
Date of creation: c.1887
Place: Victoria, Australia