Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True was born on March 15, 1812, in Pownal, Cumberland County, Maine.

He was an educator. He attended North Yarmouth Academy and Bowdoin College but left after two years. He returned to the Maine Medical School, and while pursuing his medical studies, he started to teach to support himself financially. In 1835, he opened a High School at Bethel Hill and stayed until he received his M.D. in 1840. He practiced in Durham and, after about three years, he decided to pursue a teaching career. He became Principal of Bethel High School, which became Gould’s Academy. Dr. True also taught at a Normal school in western New York and a few schools in Milan and Gorham, New Hampshire. He was editor of The Bethel Courier from 1859 to 1860. He served on the school board of Bethel for several years and one year as supervisor of schools for Oxford County. He was a member of the Maine Board of Agriculture and founder of the Bethel Farmer’s Club. Dr. True was passionately fond of botany, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and natural history and gave lessons to groups of students on minerals, geology, and botany. He contributed articles on agriculture and horticulture to the Oxford Democrat, Portland Transcript, and Lewiston Journal. He kept a small fruit and vegetable farm on Paradise Hill. In 1874, he was elected town historian. His final teaching job was at Litchfield Academy in 1883.

In 1836, he married Ruth Ann Winslow (1811–1849), and in 1849, he remarried Susanna Webber Stevens (1827–1911). He died on May 24, 1887, in Bethel, Oxford County, Maine.