Isaac Rucker

One January night in 1864, Isaac, a 20-year-old enslaved man from the Alston Farm near Long Branch, escaped slavery with his brothers and trekked through enemy territory almost 200 miles to Knoxville, TN. 

On May 12, he enlisted in the Company G, 1st Regiment, Heavy Artillery, US Colored Troops under a new surname of his own choosing, Rucker. After the war, he served at the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga and mustered out in March of 1866. Isaac returned to Lumpkin County, and in 1871, married Miss Emeline Turk. 

They would have no children, but he came to own land in the same district where he and his family had once been enslaved. Following her death in 1905, Isaac would remarry two years later. His second wife, Mary Stephens, was a much younger divorcee and mother of seven, and this scandal resulted in the couple being dropped from the rolls of their church. 

Isaac died in 1915, and Mary followed behind in 1927. Mary is buried to his right. Together they are buried here in the African American section of the cemetery.