The wives of John Tucker (1755-1802): Keziah Breshears and Jenny Harrod

A man with two wives...well, there are worse things and who knows, maybe there is more to the story and it was all legal and moral. I haven't looked too much into either of their lives and background so today I'm going to focus on that and see what I can find out. We can hope too that it will help open some doors to the Tucker lineage.

Wife #1, Keziah (Kessiah) Breshears, born 1756 in NC to Basil and Ann Brashears. She married John on August 31, 1772 in Rowan County, NC.

They had two children, Mary and John. It appears that John Jr. died young. Mary grew up and married Stephen Haynes. There is a mystery here in that I cannot find anything about Keziah's death. John lists Mary in his will which is leading me to believe that Mary was in TN at that time. So the question I have is did John actually leave Keziah behind? If not, did she die giving birth to Mary and John left for the West and took Mary OR did Keziah go with and die on the way there or soon after arriving?

Family trees on ancestry indicate that Keziah died in either 1780 or 1801.

Jenny Harrod was born in 1760 in Virginia to James Harrod and Elizabeth McCarty. She went West with her family and her father was also a signer of the Cumberland Compact with John Tucker.

It is uncertain if their marriage was legal or not, but according to research, they were married by Trustee James Shaw in the second marriage ceremony in 1780 in the new settlement.

John and Jenny had 10 children:

Enoch (1784-1855) my ancestor
Hannah (1787-1872)
Nancy (1788-1840)
Henry G. (1790-?)
Sarah Sally (1790-1862) I assume Henry and Sarah Sally are twins but I haven't done a lot of research on all the kids yet to confirm dates.
Margaret "Peggy" (1793-1810)
Phoebe (1795-?)
William Riggs (1795-1860)
Samuel Alexander (1800-1891)
John (1801-1819) this doesn't match info I've read indicating he died young like his half-brother John.

There are a couple stories on what happened to Jenny after John died. One says that she was deemed a lunatic through the court proceedings regarding John's will and she was put into the care of her eldest son (my ancestor). Other stories indicate that she remarried and moved to Illinois. I have not been able to locate and hard evidence of which of these is true.

I have her death as 1810 however I think that is questionable.