The Tome

Henry the Traveler, The Tapscotts of the Wabash Valley is becoming a weighty tome. It will be difficult to keep it under 500 pages, the limit for hard-binding and for reading without the aid of a book stand (or a forklift). Work has stopped (for a while) on the Sweitzers, descendants of  Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott's daughter Elizabeth and has been started (actually restarted) on the Siverlys, descendants of Elizabeth's sister Nancy. Future work remains on the Lockards and the Sanders, descendants of two more of Henry's daughters, Frances Ann and Sarah Ann. A fifth daughter, Lydia A., who married William S. Cardell, appears to have left no offspring, so there are no Cardells to wade through (unliked the Sweitzers, Siberlys, Lockards, and Sanders), thank goodness..

The Siverly family is exceedingly large. Nancy Tapscott and William Siverly, had eight children who lived to adulthood. Six of the eight, married and left children. Right now, with incomplete research, 215 descendants with 125 spouses have been identified for Nancy and William. Among the family names introduced in the Siverly line are Gummere, Moore, Spencer, Montgomery. If I stick to my goals of provided detailed information on only the first four generations for Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott with the fifth generation merely named, the number of Siverly descendants included will be just a little over 100 with 70 or so spouses. But then there are the families of the spouses ...

At age 76, I sometimes question my wisdom in taking on such a ponderous task One can only hope that this tome does not turn out to be a tomb.