Mr Gilbert Milligan Tucker Jr was born in Albany, New York on 3 November 1880.¹ According to his 1920 passport, he was born at the family residence in the presence of a physician and nurse but the birth was not officially recorded and an affidavit had to be supplied by =his father to verify his identity.

He was the son of Gilbert Milligan Tucker (1847-1932) and Sarah Edwards Miller (1847-1930), both natives of Albany who were married in 1877. He had an elder sister, Margaret Cleveland (1878-1926). 

The elder Gilbert M. Tucker was a native of Bethlehem, Albany and the son of Luther Tucker (1802-1873) and the former Margaret Lucinda Smith (1811-1893). Luther Tucker founded The Country Gentleman magazine and his son Gilbert, following graduation from Williams College, entered into business with he and the boy’s elder brother, Luther Tucker Jr.

Following the death of his father in 1873 and the death of his brother in 1897, Gilbert became editor-in-chief and continued in that capacity until the magazine was sold in 1911 to the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia. 

Gilbert Sr was also president of the New York State Agricultural Society and a trustee of Cornell University. He authored three books: A Layman’s Apology, Our Common Speech and American English and was vocal in his criticisms of various new farming methods or social changes, being an outspoken critic of women’s suffrage, for example. 

The younger Gilbert grew up in Albany in his father’s shadow; in 1898 he was a graduate of Albany Academy, going on to study agriculture at Cornell from where he graduated in 1901. Following graduation he followed his father to work at the The Country Gentleman, working as circulation manager and doing so for a decade until the publication’s sale in 1911. 

In 1910 the Tucker family are shown residing at 304 State Street in Albany, where they had lived many years, with both men of the house described as journalists. The home remained in the Tucker family until its sale in 1939 for $25,000 ² and remains standing to this day.

In January 1912, in the wake of the sale of The Country Gentleman, Gilbert, his parents and sister Margaret travelled for a vacation to Egypt and other spots in the Mediterranean. His 1911 passport described him as standing at 5’ 9” and with dark brown hair, blue eyes, a fair complexion with full chin and forehead and a medium nose and mouth.

During the family’s travels in Egypt, their path crossed with that of another party of Americans on vacation, Mrs Thomas Potter Jr, her daughter Olive Earnshaw and friend Margaret Hays. Tucker, a bachelor, was reportedly very taken with the enchanting Miss Hays and spent much time with she and her companions.

Tucker cut his vacation short in Naples to return to New York; in later years he stated that, as he was president of the Albany Academy Alumni Association he needed to be home for a 25th anniversary event later that month. It has also been suggested that he wished to accompany Miss Hays and her fellow travellers to spend more time with his new crush.

Leaving his family behind in Naples, Tucker and his new friends travelled to Cherbourg where they boarded Titanic as first class passengers; Mr Tucker travelled under ticket number 2543 which cost £28, 10s, 9d and whilst aboard took cabin C-53, situated close to Miss Hays and Mrs Earnshaw who occupied C-54.

Rescued from the Titanic disaster in lifeboat 7, the first to leave the ship, Tucker recalled in a later interview from the 1950s:

Tucker disembarked from the Carpathia in New York, clutching one of the then-unidentified Navratil children (The Argus, 20 April 1912) that Miss Hays, a fluent Francophone, had assumed guardianship over until the boys could be positively identified and reunited with their family. Met by friends at the pier, he was whisked off to the Cornell Club before joining relatives at their apartment on West 92nd Street. His exchanges with the press were brief, except to heap praise on the conduct of Titanic’s crew which he labelled as heroic. 

Tucker rested in Manhattan and resisted returning to Albany immediately as he expected to be called as a witness to the American inquiry into the sinking; but that summons never materialised. 

Accusations that Tucker had saved a dog from the sinking were addressed by the media:

Interestingly though, Miss Hays did indeed save her small canine friend from certain death on the Titanic, perhaps spawning the rumour. 

As it happens, although Tucker and Miss Hays maintained contact, no romance blossomed and she married elsewhere the following year, becoming Mrs Charles Daniel Easton. 

Tucker remained a bachelor for the next decade and continued to reside with his parents, appearing on the 1920 census at their State Street Home; during WWI he was associated with the New York Food Commission, later serving for a number of years in the State Department of Health. His experiences on the Titanic did not deter him from sea travel and in later years made trips to the Caribbean, visiting Dominica, Martinique and Trinidad, among other islands. 

In October 1921, the engagement of Tucker to Mildred Penrose Stewart was announced. Miss Stewart was born in Delaware on 5 March 1886, the daughter of physician Dr Francis E. Stewart and the former Mary Ida Seidel of Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was a former executive secretary of the Dutchess County Health Association. The couple were wed in 1922.

Mildred Penrose Stewart Tucker

Tucker and his new bride remained childless and lived for many years at Rockhill Farm in Glenmont and at 158 South Pine Avenue in Albany and remained active in local affairs, with Tucker holding the presidency of various organisations and being a member of the First Albany Reformed Church. Gilbert gave up driving his car at age 80, after a promise he made to himself as a younger man but maintained offices in Albany’s D&H building well beyond that milestone. 

A self-declared disciple of political economist Henry George (1839-1897), in later years Tucker dabbled in economics and authored six books on the subject, including The Self-Supporting City, Common-Sense Economics and Your Money and What to do With It. He was a frequent letter-writer to the local press, espousing his political and economic sentiments.

Read one of Tucker's many letters

 In 1965 Tucker and his wife relocated to La Jolla, San Diego, California for a warmer climate away from the fuss of Gilbert’s many business activities in Albany. His “retirement” there was brief and Gilbert Milligan Tucker died from pneumonia in Carmel, California on 26 February 1968 aged 87. He was cremated at the Little Chapel By the Sea, Pacific Grove, California and his remains were interred in Albany Rural Cemetery in a Tucker family plot. 

His widow Mildred remained in California until her death on 22 January 1981 aged 94. They are interred together.