Edgehill

Edgehill manor house.

Recently I received an email stating that the sender, Judy, was a great granddaughter of William Fairfax Tapscott and asking if I knew anything about her origins. Indeed I do, Judy. William Fairfax was a great grandson of Samuel Chichester Tapscott, a GG grandson of Chichester Tapscott, and a GGG grandson of Capt. Henry Tapscott. It was into Chichester’s and then Samuel Chichester’s hands that Capt. Henry’s Edgehill Plantation eventually passed. I was going to suggest that Judy take a look at my posting on this site about Edgehill, but found to my amazement that no mention of Edgehill has previously appeared in these pages. Here is a post long overdue.

Until recently, on the east side of Virginia State Highway 354 (River Road) in Lancaster County, where Belle Isle Road enters from the west, at the end of an unpaved driveway heading up a small hill, stood a white, two-story, frame house dating from around 1770. This was the manor for Edgehill, Capt. Henry Tapscott’s home plantation.

An upstairs room.

Edgehill was large plantation, almost 200 acres, and the manor was a fine house. Capt. Henry was, after all, far wealthier than his brothers, Edney and James. But eventually the plantation passed to those not bearing the Tapscott name through a complex series of marriages, inheritances, and sales, until in 1910 part of the land containing the plantation house was sold to someone with no (known) Tapscott relationship. And Judy lost a possible inheritance. The complicated ownership saga appears in my book, Henry the Immigrant, but to tell you the truth the drawn-out tale is a little boring to nonhistorians.

Slave entrance.

The plantation house has quite a history. It was in that house that Chichester’s daughter Alice Martin Tapscott and granddaughter Mary Alice Tapscott were reportedly born. The two Alice’s are the matriarchs of the Pierce’s of Lancaster County. One of their descendants was Chichester Tapscott Peirce (“Chit”), a loved and renown Lancaster County physician. That story is particularly complex since “Chit” was descended from Chichester Tapscott by two different routes, a case of cousins marrying.

Oldest part of the house, eighteenth century.

A variety of questionable secondary sources claim that prior to heading off to battle at the opening of the Civil War, the Lancaster Cavalry (9th Virginia Cavalry, Company D) assembled at Edgehill for receipt of its company banner, presented by the girls of St. Mary’s White Chapel Church. Among the Confederate troops were the two sons of Samuel Chichester Tapscott, William Chichester, company bugler and standard bearer, and Aulbin Delaney, also a standard bearer. When William was killed in action, his surviving brother saved the Lancaster flag from capture, wrapping it around his torso and secreting it under his uniform. He returned to Edgehill with the banner, which was kept by the family until the 1920s when his niece gave it to the Museum of the Confederacy for safe keeping. Some of this, however, may be only legend, for Aulbin Delaney Tapscott was reportedly taken prisoner in May 1863 and could not have been present when his brother was mortally wounded. It was William Chichester Tapscott’s death at the Battle of Upperville that led to the eventual loss of Edgehill by the Tapscotts, since the plantation went to William’s wife, who remarried.

When I visited the Northern Neck in 2005 I got a tour of the Edgehill plantation house from the present owner. And I got some photographs, several of which are shown here. Unfortunately, the manor is no more. Deemed too expensive to renovate, it was demolished.

Susan Cary Tapscott

In a still-unsuccessful attempt to definitively connect Robert Francis Tapscott with the family of Henry Tapscott (the Immigrant), I have continued researching the sons of James and Susan Howard (Baker) Tapscott—Baker, Newton, and Chichester since one of them appears to be the most likely connection (if there is one). The latter two brothers each had a single known child, a daughter. Susan Cary Tapscott (Newton) and Anna Chichester Tapscott (Chichester). Susan Cary Tapscott’s death is the subject of a most interesting tale, one that unfortunately sheds no light on Robert Francis.

Following Newton’s death, his daughter, Susan Cary, whose middle name comes from her grandmother, Elizabeth Blair (Cary) Fairfax, was made a ward of her uncle Baker Tapscott. She is shown living with her aunt and uncle Susanna Carolyn (Tapscott) and Lucas P. Thompson in the 1850 Augusta County, Virginia, census, where her age is given as 23 (birth year 1826 or 1827). Consumption, took her life, as it did her mother’s. She went to Savannah, Georgia, for her health, and passed away there in 1852.

Four years after her death, one of the Virginia delegates to the 1856 Southern Commercial Convention in Savannah, Georgia “brought to memory Miss Tapscott of Staunton, who died of consumption, in Savannah.” From a newspaper article, “Gayety in Savannah,” The Daily Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, Monday, 15 Dec 1856, p. 1, col. 3:

The disease had fastened upon her, and in a very short time she fell a victim to the destroyer. Towards the close of her life, when pale wasted and emaciated, she was frequently placed in an open carriage and driven along a beautiful road, that gently winds along the banks of the lovely Savannah river, at this point. Conscious of her approaching dissolution, and feeling that the beautiful savannas of the South would soon be forever shut from her eye, and that the gentle and balmy breezes which are so peculiar to the climate would soon cease to fan her cheeks, she ordered the carriage to be stopped on one occasion, and pointed out a spot near the banks of the river, beneath a little grove of trees, where she desired her remains to be buried. in a short time after, her spirit winged its way to realms above, and in accordance with her request, the ashes of that fair girl now repose at the very spot designated by her in life. her name was Sue Cary Tapscott, a one that will doubtless be remembered by many in Virginia. There is no stone of any description to mark the spot, or tell the passer by who reposes under the shade of that beautiful little grove where her body now lies. Mr. Hunter, the speaker, stated that there was now a larger body of Virginians present in Savannah than would ever again be collected on Georgia soil, and he hoped they would contributed something to the erection of an appropriate monument in memory of Sue Cary Tapscott. the appeal, which consisted mainly of a tribute to the virtues and accomplishments of the deceased and was truly pathetic and affecting, was liberally responded to, and over $200 collected for the purpose. The funds will be placed in the hands of Mr. Charles Preston, at whose residence Miss Tapscott died, and that gentleman will superintend the erection of the monument.

In Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery (made famous by John Berendt’s 1994 novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) stands a stone engraved “Susan Tapscott of Staunton Va. Died 1852.” Enclosed by an ornate wrought iron fence, her monument predates the formation of the public burial ground from the Mullryne Plantation on the Wilmington River joining the Savannah River, where her carriage apparently passed