Golden Arthur Tapscott

One of my dad’s many Tapscott cousins was Golden Arthur Tapscott. "Golden" always seemed to me a most unusual name. But there were several Clark County residents with that name including the euphoniously-named Golden Buckle, who lived in Martinsville Twp near the Sweets and the Lowrys and not far from the Tapscotts. (Of course there were some Clark County inhabitants whose names were not so euphonious including Rosie and Harry Bottom. I kid you not.) Unusual or not, there have been, as far as I can tell, no other Golden Tapscotts, in Clark County or elsewhere.

Born to William Riley and Minerva (Rountree) Tapscott on 8 Oct 1892 in Clark County’s Anderson Twp (according to the birth record) or in Clark Center (according to Golden), Golden Arthur sometimes seemed at loose ends. Skinny as a rail, and not always in good health, he worked for many years as a farmhand. His first relationship may have resulted in an illegitimate child, something discussed at length in a post of 18 Aug 2015.

After being drafted into the Army during WW I, Golden was discharged 29 Dec 1918, having served just a little over seven months. On 14 Jun 1922, he married Mary Combs in Clark County. The bride, daughter of Milo C. Combs, a Dolson Twp farmer, and Rosabelle Lycan, was eighteen; the groom, thirty. In 1925, the short marriage ended in divorce. Mary went on to marry Benjamin Harrison Waymire Sr., whose first marriage to Emma Pearl Sweet, had ended abruptly on 8 Jul 1922 when the buggy in which Emma, her husband, her sister, and her two-year-old child were riding home from Chrisman, Illinois, was struck by an automobile. Emma died almost instantly. The automobile driver, Miss Madge Boone, did not stop. It turns out that Emma Sweet was Golden’s first cousin.

National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Danville
Illinois (Veterans Health Administration Historical Photo).

Golden continued working as a farmhand, lodging with farmers and finally, in 1940, living with his widowed mother Minerva, also a lodger. During this time he spent well over a year, 4 Sep 1929 to 22 Jan 1931, at the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Danville, Illinois, being treated for chronic prostatitis and lumbago, peculiar illnesses for such a long stay.

After his mother died, in 1944, Golden moved across the river to Terre Haute, Indiana, where he presumably met Mary Elizabeth Robinson, a widow. The two were married 19 Dec 1946 in Vigo County, Indiana.

As he aged Golden’s driving ability may have diminished. On Tue 25 Nov 1975 during the first Terre Haute snowfall of the year, he slid into another car. On Fri 25 Feb 1977, at the ripe old age of 84, he drove into the path of a motorcycle, though Golden may not have been at fault. The motorcyclist received hip and leg injuries.

Aging problems forced Golden and Mary to enter Casey Nursing Home in Clark County. There Mary passed away on 5 Aug 1980. Golden lasted just a few weeks longer, dying 25 Oct 1980. The couple are interred in Casey’s Cumberland Cemetery. With the possible (probable?) exception of Russell Raymond Tapscott (see 18 Aug 2015), Golden left no descendants.

All genealogical data reported in these posts are from primary and/or reputable secondary sources, or reliable transcriptions thereof, and never from unsourced online trees. Contact the author to request sources, which have been omitted here to improve readability. Permission is granted to use any posted material for any purpose as long as the source is cited.

Carl Herman, a Wabash Valley Tapscott

Born of Joseph and Mary Emma (Sanders) Tapscott in Clark County, Illinois, on 10 May 1894, Carl was wedded four times, but apparently left no biological offspring (18 Aug 2015 blog). We have already heard about his first marriage, to Nettie Sarah Sweitzer 19 Oct 1918, which lasted less than two years.

Carl’s third marriage, to Beulah Frances Mead on 3 Jul 1939 in Vigo County, Indiana, was also short with a divorce suit filed almost exactly two years later. Married six times in Vigo County, to five different men (one man was wedded twice), Beulah was a most interesting character. Each of her six marriage license applications gives a birth date of 5 Feb but a different year – 1898, 1897, 1896, 1899, 1901, and 1900. Her death record gives an age corresponding to a birth year of 1902. She was almost certainly born in 1900. Beulah also tended to stretch other things on her license applications. When she married Carl, Beulah claimed to have been married only once before. In fact, she had been married three times before (four times if you include her two marriages to husband number three).

Beulah, like many people, tended to make herself older in her early years (she was first married at age 15) and younger in her later years, but the changes were minor compared with that of Carl Tapscott’s fourth wife, Pauline Benefiel, who was probably born as “Perlina” in 1870 and who knocked a "massive" fourteen years off her age when she married Carl. All this goes to show that you cannot trust marriage records when determining birth dates and prior marriages, and by no means are women always the culprits.

St. Anthony's Hospital, c1945 (Ancestry.com).

Like Carl, many of the Wabash Valley Tapscott men were not good husband material. Among the children of John Wesley Tapscott, my father, Glenn, was the only one of the boys to have had a family with children. My uncles Russell and Ralph (“Jack”) never married. Uncle Clarence’s two marriages were short and Lloyd was nearly 43 when he married. We cannot include Willard, who died young.

Pauline and Carl lived out their lives in Terre Haute, Indiana. Pauline died 28 Feb 1952, with Carl surviving her by fourteen years. Like his cousin Golden, Carl had a less than perfect driving record, but his greatest automotive difficulties came when he was not behind the steering wheel. Just three days before his 72 birthday, on 7 May 1966, he was hit by a Terre Haute driver. He spent his birthday in St. Anthony Hospital, where he died six days after the accident.

Carl was laid to rest in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, near Martinsville, where his mother, Mary, and father, Joseph, are also interred. His former spouses rest elsewhere—Nettie in Marshall Cemetery; Mary Theresa in Terre Haute’s Highland Lawn Cemetery; Beulah in Lexington, Kentucky; and Pauline in Trimble Cemetery, Sullivan County, Indiana.

Russell Raymond Tapscott

Born 20 Nov 1892 in Marshall, Illinois, to an unmarried Flora Bell Walls in what is called by genetic genealogists a “non-paternity event” (NPE), Nettie Walls/Tingley/Sweitzer had a muddled, short existence. At various times she was given different birth names—“Walls” from her mother, “Tingley” from her great uncle Samuel Tingley Jr. (Flora Bell’s guardian and foster father), and “Sweitzer” from Frank Sweitzer (probably John Franklin Sweitzer), said in her death certificate to be her father.

Like mother, like daughter. On 3 Apr 1918, in another Marshall NPE, Nettie, husbandless, gave birth to “Russell Tingley.” Six months later, Nettie married Carl Herman Tapscott, and Russell Raymond took the name “Tapscott.”

The difficult marriage was short. A divorce decree dated 9 Mar 1920 claimed that Nettie Tapscott

“committed adultery with one William Clouse; and …  with divers other persons in the city of Marshall.”

Both Carl and Nettie remarried. Nettie’s second marriage (to William L. Clouse) lasted just a few months longer than her first, ending when she died at age thirty of acute cholecystitis (look it up if you are really interested).

The Smoking Gun?

Over the past (nearly) century, it has been generally assumed that, wedded or not, Carl Tapscott was Russell Raymond Tapscott’s biological father. He did, after all, marry Nettie, presumably to make an honest woman of her. But he is named as Russell’s father in no official document nor in any contemporary record. And now there is evidence for different paternity. In a dusty folder of unsourced obituaries filed away at the Illiana Genealogical and Historical Society in Danville, Illinois, is an obituary for Russell Tapscott that reads

               “Born April 3, 1918, at Marshall, he was the son of Golden and Sarah Tapscott.”

Son of Golden? And who was Sarah? The last question is easier answered than the first, for Nettie probably also had the name “Sarah.” An obituary for her daughter (with William Clouse) refers to Nettie as “Sarah Nettie Tapscott Clouse.”

But we still have Golden to contend with. Golden Arthur Tapscott was Carl Tapscott’s cousin. They had the same grandparents, William and Mary Angeline (Wallace) Tapscott. They were about the same age and were both unmarried at the time of Russell’s birth. The contention that Golden was Russell Tapscott’s father could be true. On 24 May 1918, a few weeks after Russell's birth, Golden was among a group of 25 Marshall draftees sent to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to train for service in the U.S. Army, service that may have helped avoid facing the problems of unplanned fatherhood. Four days later, Carl Tapscott left Marshall with 25 men scheduled for training at Camp Gordon, Georgia.

Golden or Carl (or someone else)? It is unlikely that the obituary author mixed up Carl and Golden, both of whom were living when Russell died. Obituaries are often written by surviving spouses, and on 9 Nov 1963, the date of Russell's death, his wife, Helen Frances, was still living. Had he told her of his actual parentage? And who had told him? Russell was only four years old when his mother died, although his grandmother Flora Bell lived to see Russell's 21st birthday. We may never know the truth, though I now believe Golden to be the likely father. Perhaps it really makes no difference. What is important is the story, not necessarily the genes. But it is nice to have a sturdy, reliable genealogical skeleton on which to flesh out the history.

This is what I posted back in Aug 2015, but now we have a smoking gun. On 13 Mar 1918, when Nettie was nearing the end of her pregnancy, the Clark County Democrat published the following brief sentence about court proceedings:

"In the same court, Friday, Golden Tapscott was placed under bond on charge of bastardy preferred by Nellie [sic] Tingley."

There is no doubt. Golden was Russel Tapscott's biological father.