From the family Bible of Jonathan Rucker, and from family reminiscences, we have the following:
The family of Rucker were Huguenots and left France in the 17th century, and settled near Fairfax, Virginia. Sometime previous to the Revolution they came southward, some even as far as Mississippi. The vessel which brought them to America was wrecked and everyone on board lost, except Rucker himself and one Companion. Among his descendants, about the beginning of the Revolution, Peter and his wife Sarah Rucker came to the Mississippi country from Prince Edward County, Virginia and settled upon the river in Louisiana below Natchez. Among their children were Jonathan, Catherine, Susanna, and William.
Here his wife Sarah died, and Peter married again. His 2nd wife was disliked by the children, and little Catherine, refusing to nurse her sep-mother’s infant, took her brother William with her and went off, crossing the river in a skiff, and wrapping up her little brother in a flannel skirt to make him comfortable, they concealed themselves on the opposite bank of the river, where they could see their father with neighbors, dogs and torches hunting for them all night. The children, when day came, went to some of the neighbor’s houses. Mrs. Philip Alston took pity upon the children, having been a friend of their mother, and offered to take little Catherine into her family and send her to school with her own children. This the child enjoyed very much, and became strongly attached to Mrs. Alston and family. In 1781, when the English colonists of the Natchez District fled from the Spaniards, she took Catherine with her to the Indian nation, where they went for protection. There they met John Turnbull, the Indian agent, whom Catherine married (she being then 16 years old), and afterwards lived in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana at a place called Arlington until some years subsequent to her husband’s death. John Turnbull had previously married among the Indians, where he left a number of children.
John Turnbull came to Mobile from Scotland with his father, mother, brother, and sister. All of whom, except himself and brother, died of yellow fever the first summer after arrival.
William, the youngest, a child of 11 or 12 years, was put with the greater part of their property in the store of an English merchant. He moved with the merchant’s family to the Bahamas, where he died, leaving a wife and two small children.
John Turnbull bought a mule and a peddler’s pack and started out to trade with the Indians. In the course of time he made agent under Spanish rule and became very wealthy, owning quantities of land in Mobile, Alabama, on (ie. the east and west sides of) the Tombigbee River, and in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.
