The Richard Tapscott Family– An Overview

This is, I hope, my last post on Richard Tapscott son of William the Preacher. Again, I would like to thank Frank Jarke, one of Richard’s descendants, for passing along some family history that helped unscramble Richard’s line. Frank is more knowledgeable than I am about many aspects of the family Nevertheless, I found a four things of interest (at least to me):

1. There are several comparatively well-researched trees on the internet covering some of Richard Tapscott’s descendants, but almost all fail to actually connect with Richard.

2. Although Richard had four children, only two — Kasiah and George — are known to have left descendants. (I apologize to those of you who have decided to use another of the several names found for Richard Tapscott’s only daughter, but nobody knows for certain what her name was meant to be. Most assuredly, illiterate Kasiah did not know.)

3. The descendants of Kasiah, which comprise the “Kasiah Line” ended up McLean County, Illinois, in and near the town of Bloomington. The George line, on the other hand, ended up in Putney County, Indiana, in and near the town of Greencastle. Of course, these families have spread out today. Nevertheless, their roots are in McLean and Putney counties and that is where extensive research must start.

4. There are, today, no descendants of Richard Tapscott bearing the family name “Tapscott,” unless they have acquired the name from another source. Richard had but one son with descendants, and that son had only daughters. That, of course, means that yDNA cannot be used to confirm descent from Richard.

I’ve barely made a start on the history of the Richard Tapscott line (though I did collect about 140 new sources), but I’m stopping here to return to my Wabash Valley Tapscotts, descendants of Richard's brother Henry. Others, more closely related to Richard, can carry on the investigation. Contact me if you would like a copy of my gedcom file or a register book file for this family. The information I’ve collected will eventually be made part of my tree “Descendants of Henry Tapscott the Immigrant” on Ancestry.com, but I am not planning anything in print.

The Greencastle Tapscotts

On 27 Nov 1873 in Casey County, Kentucky, Richard Tapscott’s youngest child, George W. Tapscott, born between 1850 and 1852, married Mary Martha Burton. Born 5 Jun 1856 in Pulaski County, Kentucky, Mary was a daughter of Ellis and Elizabeth (Waldon) Burton. Her father, Ellis, had died young of “bronchitis” in Sep 1869, just four years before Mary had married.

Bean Blossom Creek

About 1876, after the birth of their first known child, Cyntha, George and Mary pulled up stakes and headed to Monroe County, Indiana, settling in a township with the rather charming (or at least horticultural) sounding name of “Bean Blossom.” The family barely had time to settle in before George died—sometime between 1880, when he appears in the census, and around 1888, about the time that his widow married John H. King.

The Tapscott/King family ended up living near the town of Greencastle in Putnam County, Indiana, and the history of the descendants of Cyntha and Anna (and of Hazel) is closely tied with that community. Indeed, the Hoosier State Chronicles, a website providing Indiana newspapers, makes it exceedingly easy to uncover the family history, perhaps too easy, because one can become swamped with the abundance of information.

George left two daughters — Cyntha Elizabeth Tabscott and Anna Tabscott. Here the spelling “Tabscott” is used because that is the spelling the girls used. Indeed, there could have been founded a whole line of “Tabscotts” (as has occurred in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, for descendants of Warner Tapscott and Susanna Bishop) except that there were no male descendants to propagate the line. Extremely good evidence exists for the name “Cyntha” for the oldest girl, who was probably named after her grandmother Cyntha Followell, though she is almost always identified by others as “Cynthia” and almost always used only the name “Elizabeth” or “Lizzie.” Mary Martha (Tapscott) King went on to have one more child, Hazel, a child of John King.

Greencastle newspaper articles hint that Annie may have been unconventional, someone who, in other eras, would have been termed a "free spirit," a "nonconformist," or a “hippie.” Perhaps it was too much for her mother and stepfather, for a 1892 local newspaper reported that (for reasons unexplained)

“Dr. Braisher … adopted Miss Anna Tabscott ... She will make that her future home.” 

A newspaper article reported that on 14 Feb 1894 Annie married an “Ab [Abner?] Parrish.” She was only fourteen at the time, and the highly questionable marriage was probably annulled. Subsequent records show her only with her birth name “Tabscott,” never as “Parrish.” Then on 22 Mar 1895 she gave birth to a son, whose name was simply reported as “Tabscott” in the birth record, which lists no father. When Anna married Daniel Ross Burks, a life-long resident of Greencastle, on 16 Dec 1898, her presumably illegitimate son, Harold, was given the name “Harold R. Burks” (claimed by some to be “Harold Ross Burks”). After her marriage, Annie had a second son, Clyde Washington Burks. Married three times, Harold R. had no known children. Clyde, on the other hand, left descendants.

Annie Tabscott’s older sister, Cyntha, married Henry Alba Paris and had eight known children, all boys, with the exception of Edith, who died young. There are today a multitude of Paris descendants in Indiana, few, if any, realizing their connection with Richard Tapscott.