Royal H. Tucker was born on July 10, 1842, in Milan, Ohio, to Newton and Martha Tucker. His father was a laborer who owned $700 of real estate and $100 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Milan. His parents were devout Presbyterians, and he joined the church around 1857. By 1860, he was working as a laborer.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 8, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company B of the 101^st Ohio Infantry on August 30. The regiment took part in the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Stones River, the Tullahoma campaign, the Battle of Chickamauga, the Battle of Lookout Mountain, the Battle of Missionary Ridge, and the Atlanta campaign. He mustered out on May 29, 1865.

 

He returned to Milan after the war, and he married Mary L. Wood around 1867. They moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, two years later, and Tucker worked as a farmer there. By 1870, he owned $200 of personal property. They returned to Ohio in 1875 and then to New York soon afterward. His wife died in the mid-1870s, and he married Mary E. Brown in June 1877. They had two children: Olive and Ella.

 

They moved to Hutchinson, Kansas, around 1887, and Tucker worked as a contractor. According to one local writer, he was “a prominent worker in the Congregational Church for several years of its earliest history and helped to build its first church” in town. He applied for a federal pension in May 1888 and eventually secured one. He died in Hutchinson on September 15, 1918.

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