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.
