The Tucker Family of Odenville

The homeplace

Where the family comes from

Long before it was "the reunion grounds," the land near Odenville was simply home — the farm where Samuel James "Jim" Tucker (1871–1960) and his wife Fannie Lou Mewbourne (1882–1952) raised eleven children in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Jim's father, Samuel Johnson Tucker (1827–1907), a Confederate veteran, is buried a short walk away at Friendship Baptist Church, and Fannie Lou's people, the Mewbournes, had come west from Elbert County, Georgia to settle in St. Clair County.

That maiden name mattered. Carried forward as a given name in the Southern custom, "Mewbourne" became "Mewbern" — the thread that still ties the family's stories back to this one farm.

Eleven children were born on this land between 1900 and 1925. The family that gathered here for decades is their descendants.

When their parents were gone, the eleven siblings held the combined homeplace together. In 1996 they organized it formally — The Tucker Foundation, Inc., chartered in Alabama for the stated purpose of genealogical research — and in 1997 the acreage was deeded into it so the whole family could keep using the place their parents built. For nearly thirty years the Foundation carried the property taxes and hosted the reunion that brought everyone back to Odenville.

The second generation

The eleven children

Samuel James & Fannie Lou Tucker's children, in order of birth. Three carry this story: Lois, the line down to today; Fred, who deeded the land into the Foundation; and Lee, long remembered at the center of it.

• Alfred Layfayette Tucker1900 – 1920Eldest son; died young, about age 20.
• Samuel Thomas Tucker Sr.1903 – 1981m. Mary Lucille Wray. Father of Mary Kate (Tucker) Rickles.
• Myrtis Louise Tucker1905 – 2001Daughter.
• Sara Amanda Tucker1908 – 1995Daughter.
• Robert Charles Tucker Sr.1910 – 1984m. Jessie Ola Smith (1931).
• Howard Joseph Tucker1913 – 2000Son.
• RememberedLee Mewbourne Tucker1916 – 2013m. Martha Sue Bingham. A Birmingham steel man — 44 years at U.S. Steel. The family's "Mewbern Lee."
• Land donorFrederick Lawrence "Fred" Tucker1918 – 2009WWII Army (Normandy); U.S. Postal Service. Deeded the acreage into the Foundation and made the reunion happen.
• Direct lineLois (Tucker) Jones1921 – 2015m. Calvin Murray Jones. Grandmother of this history's compiler.
• Ward Forman Tucker1922 – 2010Son.
• John Calvin Tucker1925 – 2013Youngest of the eleven. WWII Navy; later a court reporter in Boise, Idaho.

The thread to today

One line down from the homeplace

Every Tucker descendant traces back to Jim & Fannie Lou through one of the eleven. This is the line this page was assembled from — through their daughter Lois.

1. Great-grandparentsSamuel James & Fannie Lou Tucker 1871–1960 · 1882–1952
2. GrandmotherLois (Tucker) Jones 1921–2015
3. FatherBruce Jones b. 1953
4. CompilerEvan Jones —

Lois's brothers and sisters branch out to cousins across Alabama, Georgia, Idaho and beyond — the extended family the reunion was built to gather.

The fifty-nine acres

The land itself

Four adjoining parcels near Odenville — every one of them family ground. Even the small 0.89-acre piece deeded by "Mary Kate Rickles" came from a granddaughter of the patriarch.

• 58.89acres, four parcels
• 1996Foundation chartered
• ~$1,200yearly property tax
• 30 yrsof stewardship

The land today

A chapter closing

In August 2026 the Foundation's treasurer announced he is stepping down, and that the property taxes the Foundation had carried for three decades — roughly $1,200 a year, in recent years paid out of pocket as donations fell away — will no longer be covered. The reunion, last gathered in 2017, had already grown quiet.

What remains is worth naming plainly: fifty-nine acres of Alabama that four generations kept in the family on purpose, and the memory of the people who did the keeping. Whatever the family decides about the land, that stewardship — Fred deeding it in, and those who paid the taxes and hosted the reunion long after it was easy — is the reason there is still a homeplace to talk about at all.

The record

Timeline

• 1827Samuel Johnson Tucker born — Confederate veteran, buried at Friendship Baptist, Odenville.
• 1871Samuel James "Jim" Tucker born.
• 1882Fannie Lou Mewbourne born — the Mewborn line, from Elbert County, Georgia.
• 1900–25The eleven Tucker children born on the Odenville homeplace.
• 1952Fannie Lou Tucker dies; buried at Friendship Baptist.
• 1960Samuel James Tucker dies; buried beside her.
• 1996The Tucker Foundation, Inc. chartered in Alabama — purpose: genealogical research.
• 1997The combined 58.89-acre homeplace deeded into the Foundation as a gift.
• 2009Fred Tucker dies (age 90); the family remembers him as the one who made the reunion real.
• 2013Lee Mewbourne Tucker and John Calvin Tucker die.
• 2015Lois (Tucker) Jones dies — the last-living of the line traced here.
• 2026Foundation winding down; the property taxes it long carried will stop this fall.