John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “John Southgate Tucker,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/t/ed_tuckerJS.htm.
John Southgate Tucker was born on May 31, 1838 in Norfolk, Virginia, where his family on both sides had been prominent since before the American Revolution. He attended the Episcopal School in Alexandria, Virginia and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1853 and joined the class of 1855. While at Dickinson, he was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and also became one of the notorious founder members of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1855 and studied for the law.