Edmund Winchester Rucker

We found the photo below in a trunk of papers from Adele Wynne that included newspaper clippings from the early 1900's listing members of Forrest's Cavalry from Lincoln County, Tennessee, but we could not identify him after trying cross reference it with the newspaper clippings. Today, quite by accident, we learned that the clippings and the photo are unrelated.

While visiting Cragfont, the home of James Winchester, we were surprised to see the same photo hanging on the wall there. The guide identified the man as Edmund Winchester Rucker, and some research on that name easily confirmed it. General Rucker was the grandson of James Winchester, and a hero of the South in the Civil War. He apparently lost his arm in the Battle of Nashville, after being injured and captured while leading a brigade under General John Hood during his invasion of Tennessee. Yankee doctors removed the arm which had been badly injured in the fighting. Though he was never formally commissioned General, he is rerred to as a Brigadier General because of his command of multiple brigades.

Edmund Winchester Rucker would have been Adele Wynne's first cousin, once removed. Rucker's mother Louisa, and Adele Wynne's grandmother Almira, were sisters. Rucker was four years older than his first cousin, Andrew Jackson Wynne, Adele's father. Both had grown up in middle Tennessee, about 35 miles apart -- Rucker in Murfreesboro and AJ Wynne in Castalian Springs. Both men settled in Alabama after the war -- Rucker in Birmingham and AJ Wynne 100 miles southwest in Dayton. It is very likely that Adele Wynne knew Rucker, and probably knew him well, which would explain why her papers would have included the photo.

For more on Edmund Winchester Rucker, see this article about the General Edmund Winchester Rucker Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Enterprise, Alabama.