Bowling for Bollings

No, I have not died, but I took off a couple of months to work on another book - nothing to do with Tapscotts. I am back on track with the 2nd edition of Henry the Immigrant, and I really do hope to have it out shortly.

In the meantime, I have looked further into the Tapscott'/Bolling connection. The remarkably close yDNA genetic matches between Tapscotts in the Family Tree Tapscott project (https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Tapscott/) and Bollings in the Family Tree Bolling Project occur for Bollings in Family Group 5, believed to be descended from James Bowling. At 67 markers, a genetic distance as close as 1 is seen (with two others at distance 2 and several at distance 3). One must take matches between people with different surnames with a grain of salt, particularly when a very common haplogroup such as R-M269 is involved. Nevertheless, with such close matches, it is virtually certain that the Virginia Tapscotts and the Family Group 5 Bollings share a "recent" common male ancestor.

The Virginia Tapscotts have been reliably traced back to January 1700, when Henry Tapscott arrived at the Northern Neck of Virginia from Bristol England. James Bowling, the earliest identified Group 5 ancestor, died around 1729, while Henry died in Apr 1727 (in Lancaster County, VA). Moreover, Henry and James arrived in America in the same year. All this indicates that they may have had similar ages. (Henry was born 27 Aug 1685 in England).

Since Henry arrived from England with the name "Tapscott" and since James arrived with the name "Bowling" in the same year, any split in names from a common ancestor must have occurred in England before the transportation of Henry and James. This is also indicated by the fact that descendants of Henry by two different lines (his sons Edney and Capt. Henry) show yDNA matches to the same Bollings. Thus, any division had to occur with Henry the Immigrant or earlier. (Unfortunately, no yDNA results are known for a descendant of Henry through his son James.) It could, of course, be that the most recent common ancestor for the Virginia Tapscotts and the Group 5 Bollings lived before the use of surnames.  Since Henry Tapscott's origins appear to be in the Exmoor region of England (Somerset/Devon area), it would be interesting to see yDNA results for present residents of this area for both Tapscotts and Bollings.