Susie Bell Tingley

Three past posts (6/25/2015, 9/13/2015, 9/14/2015) have discussed that infamous Clark County, Illinois, scallywag, Samuel Tapscott. We know of Samuel's demise, on 15 Jun 1903, of “concussion of brain” under mysterious circumstances. But what happened to his wife, Susan? We still don’t know everything, but we know more than we once did.

Susan Tingley was born in Indiana to John Hacket and Hannah (Wallen) Tingley. The family of ten (or more) children settled and farmed in Anderson Twp, Clark County, giving Susan and Samuel Tapscott ample opportunity to meet.

Susan’s middle initial is given as “C” in her 1876 marriage record and as “M” in a less reliable newspaper article. Since she was often called “Bell” or “Belle” or even “Susie Bell,” it is not at all unlikely that her middle name was “Corabelle.”

In 1879 a “Susan Tapscott” purchased land in Auburn Twp from James W. Tapscott (Samuel’s brother) for $600 and then in 1882 sold the same land back to him for $150. This was almost certainly Susan, wife of Samuel, though where she got $600 for the initial purchase and why she sold the identical land back at a loss is unknown. In 1880 Susan (Tingley) Tapscott, along with her siblings, inherited land from her father’s estate, land that today is part of Lincoln Trails State Park.

Susan had a hard life, at least once she met Samuel. Samuel was not only a threat to others, he was cruel to his family. According to family members, one daughter, Viola Jane, was crippled by Samuel, who swung her by her leg to the floor when he became angry while putting on her shoes. The leg had to be amputated and Viola lived out her life with an artificial leg.

Another daughter, probably Maria, died in 1898, when she threw herself in front of a train in Terre Haute. According to family tradition, she was pregnant and unmarried, but certainly her unhappy childhood contributed.

An 1884 Terre Haute newspaper article tells of Samuel’s viciousness:

MARSHALL, Ills, July 13. The wife of Samuel Tabscott, a brutal character living in Anderson township, came to town the latter part of the week with two of her children whom she said she had stolen away from her husband. He is in the habit of beating his wife and children with anything that comes to hand. The woman showed the strips made on the back of one of the children, a little girl. They looked like they had been made with a heavy strap. The woman said that the other two children were with their father but that she meant to get them also away from him as he maltreated them shamefully. He was arrested for the crime of wife beating several years ago. He is a rather dangerous character, and all the neighbors are afraid of him, hence will not do anything to prevent his brutality.

For a long time we did not know what happened to Susan. In 1895 Susan gave permission for her daughter Estelle (”Stella”) to marry in Edgar County, but on his 1903 death certificate, Samuel is listed as a widower. Though this seemed to indicate that Susan died between those two years, death certificates are untrustworthy. One would not be surprised to have found that Susan disappeared not owing to death, but because she changed her name and residence to escape a terrible life. And, indeed we were to find that Susan lived many years more, the subject of a future blog.