Description:

Historic payment voucher from the War of 1812, stamped with a free frank from Thomas Tudor Tucker (1745-1828), who at the time was Treasurer of the United States.

Payment vouchers were used as cash during the war of 1812. They were executed to soldiers by a government official, in this case by Thomas Tudor Tucker. The pay voucher exhibits a “free frank” — hand stamp under the top left signature of Thomas Tudor Tucker. Free franks indicated that the mailed item did not require postage.

Thomas Tudor Tucker (1745-1828) was the first of the Bermuda Tuckers to establish a historically notable career for himself in the United States, arriving in America several years in advance of his younger brother, St. George Tucker (1752-1827), the second of the Bermuda Tuckers to achieve notoriety in his adopted country.

Thomas Tudor Tucker was born in St. George's, Bermuda, to a family prominent on the Island since his ancestors had immigrated there from England in 1662. He was the son of English colonists Anne Butterfield(d. 1797) and Colonel Henry Tucker (1713–1787). His father was the great-grandson of George Tucker, the first of the Tuckers to arrive in Bermuda (1662). In addition to St. George Tucker, Thomas Tudor Tucker had another brother, Henry Tucker (1742-1800), who would become the President of the Council of Bermuda and occasional acting Governor of Bermuda. Their cousin was George Tucker (1775-1861), another Tucker who emigrated to America in the late 18th century and led a historically consequential life. 

Thomas Tudor Tucker emigrated to Virginia in the 1760s, then moved to Charleston, South Carolina (which had been settled from Bermuda in 1670, under the leadership of William Sayle, and which had a large community of expatriate Bermudians). After receiving a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, he opened a medical practice in Charleston. He was also politically active, and was an early supporter of American independence, as well as a representative to the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1776 to 1778. During the American Revolution he served as a surgeon in the Continental Army. Following the war, South Carolina sent him as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1787 and again in 1788, and he was elected to serve in the initial two sessions (1789 - 1793) of the US House of Representatives subsequent to the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.

In 1775, Thomas Tudor Tucker, along with his father, Colonel Henry Tucker and two brothers, St. Georgeand Henry, were implicated as key players in a plot to steal Bermuda’s supply of gunpowder and ship it to the American Continental Army. It is a historical supposition that Thomas Tudor Tucker requested George Washington to write a letter to the Tucker family in Bermuda asking for their aid with this operation, which Washington indeed penned, and though the affair was regarded by the British authorities as an act of treason, it was so carefully executed that no one was ever prosecuted.  

In 1801, Thomas Tudor Tucker was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson to be Treasurer of the United States, in which capacity he served until his death in 1828 (setting a record as the nation’s longest-serving Treasurer). During this time, he also served as physician to President James Madison (1809–1817). It is interesting to note that Thomas Tudor Tucker’s nephew, also named Thomas Tudor Tucker, stayed with the Bermuda branch of the family and served as an admiral in the British Navy.