Background
He was born in either White Mountain, Vermont or in New Hampshire, probably in November 1808, although one source claims 1811.
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John Tarleton
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Career
He is best known for endowing John Tarleton Agricultural College, which eventually became Tarleton State University. When Tarleton was 13, he left and wandered from place to place all over the country. In Knoxville, Tennessee, he worked as a schoolteacher for a while, before getting a job as a store clerk with the Cowan-Dickerson mercantile.
In 1860 or 1861, he set out to look over his property.
He found Native Americans living on the land, so he set up a mercantile store in Waco. He refused, and a year and a day after their wedding, she filed for divorce in a Saint Louis court.
The couple did however remain friends. The Native Americans had been supplanted by settlers, whom he paid for the improvements they had made.
He had his land surveyed and tried to sell plots, with no success, so he became a rancher, with middling success.
John Tarleton died of typhoid fever on September 11 or November 16, 1895. In his will, he left about $85,000, a considerable amount at the time, to establish a college in Stephenville, Texas, which eventually became Tarleton State University. He also directed that his land in Knoxville be used to set up the John Tarleton Institute "for poor, worthy youths of good moral character.".
