Plato, the Coachman

And now we come to Elizabeth Percifull’s second line of descendants,

A Fauquier Tapscott family story relates that before her marriage to James Tapscott, Elizabeth Percifull had a child in Lancaster Co, Virginia with her father’s enslaved coachman “Plato.” In 1781, Elijah had but two slaves, Molly and Grace, no Plato. His 1814 will, mentions just three slaves, Judith, Daniel, Leroy. Again no name resembling that of the fabled coachman.

One might ignore this story of a coachman’s child,  but Elijah is known to have owned eleven unnamed slaves in 1810, and Plato could have been among them.  More important is that on 27 Feb 1832, a “Tellham Platoe” was registered in Fauquier County, a requirement for free Blacks. His age was given as twenty-one, corresponding to a birth year of 1810 or 1811, exactly what one might expect for a child of Elizabeth prior to her marriage. And he was said to be “born free.” Under Virginia law, the slave status of a child followed that of the mother (doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem). Offspring of Elizabeth would have been born free, whether the fathers were slaves or not. Perhaps most significant is that his descendants show DNA matches with Elizabeth’s known descendants. As a son of Elizabeth, “Tellham” would have lived with James and Elizabeth Tapscott as a child, taking James’s last name (on occasion).

Tellham used or was given numerous names during his life in Fauquier Co. Contemporary records show him with first names “Telem,” “Telum,” and “Tilum,” in addition to “Tellham.” And last names “Tapscott,” "Topscott," “Tapsco,” “Tapscon,” “Pearson,” and “Plato,”  in addition to “Platoe.” And we are omitting the obvious errors “Teland”  and “Caleb,” found in two documents.

Every year between 1835 and 1850 “Telum Tapsco” (“Telum Tapscon” in 1838) paid Fauquier Co taxes, much more often than any of Elizabeth’s other children. The taxes ranged from eight cents to thirty cents, always for one male over age sixteen and often for horses and mules, up to three. Telum Tapsco was doing well for himself, as will be seen.

In the 1840 Fauquier County census, “Tilum Topscott” is shown as the head of a household comprised of a man and woman, both aged 24 to 36 (birth year 1804 to 1811), and five children under 10 years old (three boys and two girls, birth year 1830 to 1840). The family, which appears in the census only one line away from Elizabeth Tapscott’s listing, also had two slaves, a case of Blacks owning Blacks. This was not uncommon. Sometimes the ownership was “benevolent” (to avoid the higher taxes faced by freed slaves) and sometimes it was strictly “commercial.” A death record for Telem the younger gives his parents as Telem (the  first name we will use) and Peggie Tapscott.

The elder Telem and his family is missing from the 1850 census, but he and his wife, “Peggy” (“Margaret Pinn” according to the death certificate for their daughter Ann Virginia), appear with their eleven children in the Fauquier Co census of 1860 with a surname change to “Pearson.” The name change was probably due to the the census enumerator recording the name he thought he heard from a client unable to check the spelling. Though the Pearson name was not uncommon in Fauquier Co we find no connection between the Pearsons and the Tapscotts, We know that the Pearson family in the 1860 census is the family of Telem Plato Tapscott because seven of the eleven “Pearson” children (Robert, Ann, Telem (Jr.), Mack (“Mac”), Elizabeth, William, Nancy, Maggie, and George) can be readily identified bearing the surname “Tapscott” in the 1870 Fauquier County census. Only Frances and Rodolph are not immediately apparent. The age of Telem “Pearson,” sixty-seven, in the census, corresponding to a birth year of about 1793, is almost certainly incorrect. Peggy’s birth year is 1814 or 1815 according to her age of forty-five in the 1860 census.

The congressional act of 4 July 1864 recognized the Federal Government’s debt to loyal citizens for property losses suffered during the Civil War and arranged reimbursement. At first claims were allowed only by northern states, but eventually, after animosity toward the south subsided, the act was extended to those southerners demonstrating Union loyalty. Following the death of their father in 1863 and their mother in 1865, Telem and Peggy’s children asked Robert R. Tompkins (a white farmer) to administer the estate of “Telam Plato Colored” and to file a claim for losses suffered during the Civil War. By the end of his life, Telem’s surname had been changed one more time, to “Plato,” likely what it had been originally and the name I have chosen to use.

In depositions, Telem the younger claimed that milk cows, sheep, oats, and corn had been taken by Union troops, some of them under the command of “Genl Blenker” (General Louis Blenker, who died in October 1863 of injuries he had received much earlier when he commanded troops in Warrenton, Fauquier County). The younger Telem’s brother Robert stated that

All our family were in favor of the Union during the war. My father was a strong Union Man. We all thought it would better for all colored people to have the north [unclear] and we were always glad when they did [unclear], The rebels forced some of us to work on the fortifications at Manassas when the war first broke out., but after that we all kept clear of them. One of my brothers, Rodolph went off with the Union Army and we all done all we could for the Union officers and soldiers…

As administrator, Robert Tompkins claimed $1,646, of which $582.50 was allowed.

In his deposition Robert Tapscott made a strange statement:

My father was a colored man and my mother was a white woman; and the children all go by the name of Tapscott because that was my mother’s name.

The only white Tapscotts known to be in Fauquier County around the time of Robert’s birth were Elizabeth Tapscott and her daughter Harriet. Elizabeth is believed to have been the mother of Telem Plato and Harriet, his half sister. We know of no white Peggy Tapscott in Fauquier County. It sounds like Robert was speaking of his grandparents, rather than his parents. Could we have it all wrong? Perhaps, but probably not.

What do you think?