R-Z8 and the Tapscotts

The y (male) chromosome is the only nuclear chromosome that does not undergo recombination during reproduction (during “meiosis”). Thus, it gets passed down unscrambled from male to male. This being the case, one might expect the y chromosome to be identical for all males. Because of mutations, however, it isn’t. (For which geneticists are thankful.)

Two types of yDNA mutations are of interest to genetic genealogists—changes in the numbers of repeats in series of repeating units (short tandem repeats, STRs) and replacements of one nucleotide by another at particular positions in the DNA chain (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs). STR testing is the common method used in yDNA genealogy analysis to show relationship between males, particularly those having the same surname. SNP testing, on the other hand, is used to determine a male’s haplogroup, which shows where he lies on the yDNA haplotree. It is possible to predict the y haplogroup from STR testing only but it is only a prediction. All male Tapscotts who have thus far undergone yDNA STR testing and have made their results known have a predicted haplogroup of R-M269, rather uninformative information considering that this is the dominant branch of the most frequently occurring y chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe. Pick anyone off a European street, and he is not unlikely to belong to haplogroup R-M269. What is needed is testing by selected male Tapscotts to confirm and refine their haplogroup. (Perhaps we should say "haplogroups" since a person in a particular haplogroup also belongs to haplogroups further up the branch of the yDNA haplotree.)

Two male Tapscotts have now undergone SNP testing, one descended from Edney (me) and one descended from Edney’s brother Capt. Henry. Both have confirmed haplogroups of R-Z8, a subgroup of R-M269 that branched off perhaps 2000 years ago from European Germanic tribes, arriving in the British Isles with the 5^th-century AD Germanic invasion (all this is still uncertain). The  sequence of haplogroups as one travels down the M269 branch is M269>L23>L51>U106>L48>Z9>Z30>Z2>Z7>Z8>Z11>Z12, with other haplogroups yet to be identified. It is likely that all Tapscotts descended by all-male lines from Henry the Immigrant of Virginia will be found as having Z8 as their haplogroup. Further testing would refine this further, showing location further down the haplotree branch. To do this I have ordered the R1b - Z8 SNP Pack test from FamilyTreeDNA.

Past postings (23 Oct 2013, 19 Mar 2014, 18 Jul 2014) have noted that y STR testing indicates a relationship between Tapscotts and some members of the Bowling (and related names) families. In 67-marker yDNA STR tests, distances of six steps or less are found in matches between Tapscotts and Bowlings with confirmed haplogroups of R-Z8, R-U106, and R-Z12. R-Z12 is a subgroup of R-Z8 and thus people belonging to the R-Z12 haplogroup automatically belong to R-Z8. R-U106 lies further up the branch from R-Z8 and people testing positive for R-Z8 will automatically belong to R-U106, though the reverse is not true.

If the matching Bowling family members do indeed have a male ancestor in common with the Virginia Tapscotts, the two families would have to possess the same haplogroup. Thus, the SNP test results described above reinforce the possibility of a common ancestor. Deeper ancestral testing may provide additional evidence for a linkage. Note, however, that SNP test results cannot prove a common recent ancestor, but they could rule out such an ancestor.

Isaiah Grant Wright

State Street divides Bristol between

Tennessee and Virginia (Ancestry.com).

We have talked a lot about Grant Tapscott [13 Jan 2016, 20 Dec 2015, 4 Dec 2015], but what became of Isaiah Grant Wright, Grant Tapscott’s possible father? According to Isaiah’s son, Ernest, Isaiah left Clark County around the time of Grant Tapscott’s birth, ending up in Bristol, a city split between Virginia and Tennessee, where he first worked as a teamster and then foreman at Dixie Tannery, and in later years as a laborer, plasterer, and lather.

Dixie Tannery, Bristol, Tennessee (TNGenWeb Project).

Did Isaiah leave home to avoid conflicts over Grant Tapscott’s illegitimate birth? Perhaps. Did he pick Bristol because of relatives there? We don’t know. But in Bristol he presumably met and certainly married (on 14 Mar 1894) Minerva Jane Dickerson, daughter of Craig (possibly “Craig Robert Campbell”) and Margaret (Massey) Dickerson.

Grant and Minerva went on to have thirteen children, the first of which, Joseph Bachman, was born 14 Sep 1893, several months before the marriage. Isaiah may have again(?) been sowing wild oats. The family may have done poorly on Grant’s income. On 30 Dec 1924, after living all his married life in Bristol (except for a brief return to Clark County, Illinois, between approximately 1904 and 1907), Grant died at age 61 of pellagra, typically a vitamin deficiency disease of the poor. He was interred under a crude marker in East Hill Cemetery, Bristol. Minerva died in Bristol several years later, on 3 Dec 1941, and was also buried in East Hill.

Lena and Grant

Grant, Lena, and one of her prize chickens
(collection of Thurman McGinnis).

Following their marriage (see post of 20 Dec 2015), Lena Clouse and Grant Tapscott lived in Clark and Edgar counties, where Grant worked as a farmhand and Lena produced prize chickens and children, eventually fourteen (children not chickens)—Mabel (1904-1904), Ray Arthur (21 Nov 1905-4 Jul 1962), Edith Irene (8 Feb 1909-15 Jan 1989), Floyd Lloyd (6 Jan 1911-9 May 1977), Stella Mildred (15 Mar 1913-23 Feb 1985), Esther May (25 Jan 1915- 9 Jun 1929), Bertha Jane (29 Mar 1917- 20 Feb 2008), Clifford Allen (15 Apr 1919-8 May 1920), Carroll Don (1 Nov 1921-4 Mar 1922), Mary Jean (29 Aug 1923-2 Jun 2009), Wilma Norene (28 Jan 1925- 14 Nov 2006), Wilbert Dean (28 Jan 1925-11 Dec 1926), Charles Frederick (28 Jun 1926-26 Jul 1984). And finally there was the fourteenth child, an unnamed boy, who was stillborn 21 Jun 1928 in Buck Twp, Edgar County, the same day that Lena passed away from shock due to childbirth. Fourteen children were just too many.

Lena left behind seven living children, still in their teens or younger. Family members say that Grant went to pieces and farmed the children out. But if so, they were all back together by 1930, living in Danville, Illinois.

Marker in Marshall Cemetery (2014).

By 1955 Grant was married again, to Helen (sometimes "Ellen") Jenkins. “Jenkins” was probably Helen’s name from an earlier marriage since she had a son Harold Jenkins. According to a family member, Grant and Helen lived together in Danville in what appeared to be extreme poverty, at least part of the time residing in a shack with no indoor plumbing. Grant died 22 Jan 1961 and is interred with Lena in the Marshall, Illinois, cemetery.

I need help. Can anyone tell me anything about Grant Tapscott’s second wife, Helen? Leave comments.

The Elusive Miss Ann

I still find that a surprisingly large number of people believe the first Henry Tapscott (Henry The Immigrant) to have married an Ann Lee or an Ann Davis or even an Ann Lee Davis despite the fact that there is not a single reliable record-i.e., something other than trees based on imagination (see post of 3 Nov 2013). The latest score shows 98 Ancestry.com user-submitted trees showing Ann Davis as Henry's wife and 13 showing Ann Lee as Henry's wife. I had hoped that reliable research had put this ridiculousness to rest. Allow me to quote from my recent book:

On 16 May 1711 Elizabeth Nigings bound her son as an apprentice to ‘Henry Tapscott & Ann his wife.” Ann (sometimes “Anne”) appears in several records, but always, it seemed, with her married name, “Tapscott.” At first, attempts to establish Ann’s parentage were unsuccessful. The surname “Lee” was (and, regrettably, still is) assumed by many since Richard Lee was the recipient of a deed of gift from Henry. Richard Lee of “Ditchley,” a prominent Northumberland County citizen and Northumberland County Court Clerk from 1716 to 1735,  was often involved in legal transactions and signed numerous documents. This was one of those. In the deed of gift, which was restricted, Richard Lee was essentially (though not officially) acting as a trustee, not a member of the family.

Since one of Henry’s three sons was named Edney (as well as a great-grandson and a great-great-grandson), it was proposed that this might be Ann’s last name. Virginian first-borns were often named after grandparents, and the use of surnames as forenames to show family connections was common.  (The first-born children of Henry’s son Edney were named for a paternal grandfather and a maternal grandmother. The first-born of Henry’s son James was named for his maternal grandfather.) 

One of the grandchildren from Ann’s second marriage, to Benjamin George, was Ann Edney George.  But the name “Edney” was almost nonexistent in the colonial Northern Neck—almost nonexistent, but not quite. For in Northumberland County near the end of the seventeenth century lived a James Edney with a daughter Ann, who would one day be of marriageable age and appropriate residence—Wicomico Parish—to become Henry’s wife. Not only are James and Ann the only Edneys found in either Lancaster or Northumberland County documents of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, three legal records reference the name “Ann Edney,” or a variant thereof, before Henry’s marriage and none afterwards, when the name “Ann Tapscott” first appears. And James Edney owned property in the area in which Ann and Henry settled. Finally, there is no negative evidence, nothing that needs be explained away. The evidence detailed below allows us to conclude that Ann Edney, the daughter of James Edney of Wicomico Parish, and Ann Tapscott, the wife of Henry, were one and the same.

The next nine pages of the book, which is available at several libraries (see post of 20 Mar 2015), provide fully documented evidence for Ann Edney, her parentage, and her marriage to Henry citing over 100 historical records. Not a single record of any kind, other than duplicated, erroneous trees, created by who-knows-who from who-knows-what, exists with even the slightest hint that Henry Tapscott knew, let alone married, an Ann Lee or an Ann Davis. Unlike "Edney," neither "Lee" nor "Davis" is found as a given name among Ann's known descendants.