By Mike Judd
The pioneer area of “Tuckerville” along today’s state highway 66 belonged to the prominent Tucker family for four generations. Charles Masters Tucker (1834-1898) came to the U.S. from Litton, Somerset County, England. His land holdings in northeast Dallas County eventually totalled 2,297 acres including the area from the Old Centerville and Castle Road area north and east of Merritt Road (south of Pleasant Valley) and back south to just north of Big A Road in Rowlett.
All four of C.M. and Kibby Tucker’s sons received 200 acres of their father’s land when they were 20 years old. Elihu Henderson Tucker (1864-1961), Christopher Columbus “Lum” Tucker (1873-1942), Jessie Fitzgerald Tucker, and William Sidney Tucker.
Around 1900, oldest son Elihu “Dick” Tucker donated some of his allotment of land to establish the Tuckerville School – a one-room building in the middle of a pasture that educated forty children in grades 1 through 8. In later years, brothers Dick and Lum Tucker both moved into Garland and built adjacent houses on 11th Street. Tucker descendants remain in the area today and 62 acres of Tucker land along SH 66 (just east of today’s Milano Hat Company in Garland) is now Tuckerville Park.
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