Fauquier County Tapscotts - Telem's Estate

When Telem Plato died in 1863, he left a considerable estate—considerable considering the time and circumstances. He was, after all, the son of an enslaved coachman and Virginia was on the verge of rebellion, with plans to put Yankees and black people in their place.

The personal property inventory (household goods and furniture, farm implements, livestock) ran to four pages and its sale brought $974.12. According to the record of the 17 Mar 1866 estate sale, purchasers included Robt Plato, Ann V. Plato, Telem Plato, Mack Plato, Elisabeth Plato, and Nancy Plato. The Coachman’s grandchildren had taken, or been given, the surname “Plato,” at least for a while, though they would soon go back to “Tapscott.”

Combined with cash on hand of $11.00, the sale proceeds showed a value of $985.12 ($18,109 in 2022 dollars) for Telem Plato’s estate, excluding real estate. And Telem did have real estate, valued at $200 in 1860, which was presumably passed down to his children.

Wabash Valley Tapscotts - Nancy Ellen Easterday Clouse

While researching Wlliam Siverly, husband of Nancy Tapscott, a Wabash Valley Tapscott, I encountered his nephew John B. Siverly. And with John, came a mystery.

We know a lot about John B., though we have no documented proof that his middle name was “Benjamin,” as claimed by some. John B. Siverly was born 14 Oct 1860 in Anderson Twp, Clark County, to Jacob and Elizabeth (Fuller) Siverly. On 16 Jun 1889, John and Lucinda H. McKenzie were married. But the married rapidly disintegrated, lasting only long enough to produce a son, Robert Franklin Siverly, born 25 Mar 1890. Lucinda (“Cindy”), who never remarried and went back to the name “McKenzie,” died on 5 Dec 1919. Robert died just months later, on 17 Jun 1920 at age 30, leaving a wife and four children. But enough about Lucinda and Robert, who play, at best, minor roles in our mystery.

On 29 Oct 1895 in Clark County, John B., now presumably divorced from Lucinda, married Nancy Ellen Clouse. The couple had four sons—George Franklin, Clarence Douglas, Ernest, and Harold Leslie. Then on 9 Jul 1909, after less than fifteen years of marriage and three days after giving birth to Herman, Nancy died. The two older boys stayed with John; the two younger boys were farmed out to Siverly relatives.

And who was the now expired Nancy Ellen (Clouse) Siverly? Though she appears to have been born in Mar 1880, she is not found in the 1880 census, which has an official date of 1 Jun. But her birth date may be a little off or she may have been omitted because she was just weeks old, perhaps with a questionable survivability. Unfortunately, for all practical purposes, there are no 1890 census records. Thus, we first see Nancy in a census in 1900, only after she had married John Siverly.

At first it seems likely that Nancy was a daughter of Moses and Pina Ann (Plunkett) Clouse. Pina’s obituary states that she had nine children, five girls and four boys. But we find only eight children named in censuses, and only four girls. A daughter is missing. And the number of living children claimed by Pina decreased by one between the 1900 and 1910 census, before and after the death of Nancy Ellen Siverly. Thus, everything fits together.

Or does it? When Nancy’s son Clarence applied for a marriage license in 1926, he gave the “Full Christian and maiden name” of his mother as “Nancy Easterday.” And when son Ernest married, also in 1926, he gave his mother’s name as “Nancy Easterday.” And when Harold died in 2000, his obituary stated that he was born in Clark County to “John L. and Nancy Easterday Siverly.” Could Nancy have actually been an Easterday with “Clouse” her name from a previous marriage? The answer is almost certainly no. Her death record show that "Clouse" was her maiden name. Moreover, born in 1880, Nancy was only fifteen years old when she married John. There was insufficient time for an earlier marriage.

So, who was Nancy Ellen Easterday Clouse?

Wabash Valley Tapscotts - The Spencer Case

In 1939 Marshall, Illinois, was the site of the “celebrated Spencer robbery case.”

The tale of the Spencer Case starts with the marriage of Georgia Josephine Spencer to William Woodrow Rease (also “Reece,” “Reese”) in Detroit, Michigan, around Jan 1936. Georgia had been born on 6 Jun 1912 in Clark County, Illinois, to Martha E. (Siverly) and Carroll Elmer Spencer. Since Martha (usually called “Mattie”) was a daughter of Nancy Tapscott, Georgia was a great granddaughter of Henry the Traveler, a fourth-generation Clark County “Tapscott,” and my second cousin once removed.

What Georgia was doing in Michigan, where she married, we don’t know, but William and Georgia ended up back in the Marshall area, where Georgia’s now-divorced mother, Mattie was living.

On 13 Jan 1939 Marshall’s tranquility was broken. For two or three nights before that date, Mattie Spencer thought she had seen prowlers around her home. Then on the night of the 12^th a brick was thrown through a window. Becoming alarmed, Mattie went to the home of her daughter and son-in-law the next evening along with several thousand dollars which she kept in her house. Mattie did not believe in banks and was known to take her savings with her when she traveled.

About 7:30 that evening (the 13^th) William Rease went to the back of his house to throw out a pan of water. He claimed that someone slugged him while he was outside and then went into the house and severely beat his wife, Georgia, and mother-in-law, Mattie. Taking Mattie Spencer’s purse, filled with money and resting in her lap, the robbers had fled. Georgia was two months pregnant and her four-year-old daughter was in the house.

Police cracked the case when they observed someone connected with the family was spending large amounts of money. That someone turned out to be William Rease. Knowing that his mother-in-law kept a large amount of unbanked cash, William, it was claimed, had gathered a group of conspirators and had planned the robbery. Following the theft, the gang had divided their proceeds in a Terre Haute nightclub and had then decamped. William was arrested in Madisonville, Kentucky. Nine more suspects (not all, it turned out, guilty) were arrested, at places as far away as Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Marshall, Illinois, courthouse, site of the
1939 Spencer Case trials

In March 1939 a Marshall grand jury brought indictments ranging from accessory to burglary to assault to robbery with a dangerous weapon against seven individuals. (Forrest Tapscott, Georgia’s second cousin, was one of the jurors.) Four men were eventually sentenced to a penitentiary term of 1 to 20 years. One of the four was William Rease, who had pleaded guilty. Two more suspects, who “had some connection with the robbing,” were given one year’s probation.

On 2 May 1939, citing her husband's felony as grounds, Georgia was granted a divorce from William Rease. Georgia went on to own and operate the East Marshall Motel (a collection of green-roofed and white-walled cabins that opened in 1950) for more than forty-years. She died two months shy of age 93 on 28 Mar 2005 near Marshall. What became of William is the subject of a future post.

Wabash Valley Tapscotts - The Two Nancys of Kentucky

Hi, Tapscott history aficionados -

Despite a dearth of Tapscott family blogs, I have not abandoned family history research. I’ve just been working day and night writing The Tapscotts of the Wabash Valley, a book covering Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott and their descendants. Unfortunately there are many, many descendants. Planned for inclusion are detailed biographies on four generations - 210 descendants and 191 spouses - with names and some limited data provided for a fifth generation (another 253 descendants). Several months' work have allowed the lines of Henry and Susan’s four oldest children (William, John, James, and Thomas) to be “biographized,” but there are eight more lines to go. Nancy Tapscott, Henry and Susan’s fifth child and oldest daughter, has now been reached.

A large number of family trees on the internet confuse the Wabash Valley Nancy with her cousin Nancy of Casey County, Kentucky. This is understandable since the two Nancy Tapscotts were both born in Kentucky and have similar birth, marriage, and death dates. But their histories are quite different.

Photo by Ritch Fuhrer

Photo by Ritch Fuhrer

The Wabash Valley Nancy was born in Green County, Kentucky, around 1835, to Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott, married farmer William Siverly on 29 Feb 1856 in Clark County, Illinois, and, after giving birth to twelve children, died sometime between 1880 and 1900, probably in Clark County. Her crude grave marker in Clark County’s Shad Cemetery (also known as Siverly or Shotts Cemetery) gives her name, but no dates. Though badly deteriorated, her husband’s marker in that cemetery is more informative.

Photo from Find A Grave

The other Nancy was born in Casey County, Kentucky on 22 Dec 1836 to William Stewart and Rhoda Jane (Coppage). There she married blacksmith George W. Coffman on 23 Dec 1852 and, after raising five children, died on 8 Nov 1914 in Lincoln County, Kentucky. George and Nancy’s gravestone in Middleburg Cemetery, Casey County, is almost illegible, but her name is clear.

Some trees erroneously show the Nancy born in Green County as marrying George Coffman, others show the Nancy of Casey County marrying William Siverly, and several show a single Nancy marrying both George and William. Moreover, several trees claim that Nancy traveled to Clark County and then back to Kentucky to die. I doubt that this blog will result in corrections, but hope springs eternal. Contact me for reliable, contemporary sources for the brief biographies shown above, or for more detailed histories.

But I must get back to writing about Nancy of the Wabash valley, whose line is comprised of 71 people (descendants and spouses) scheduled for biographies. Perhaps I should consider multiple volumes.

The Tome

Henry the Traveler, The Tapscotts of the Wabash Valley is becoming a weighty tome. It will be difficult to keep it under 500 pages, the limit for hard-binding and for reading without the aid of a book stand (or a forklift). Work has stopped (for a while) on the Sweitzers, descendants of  Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott's daughter Elizabeth and has been started (actually restarted) on the Siverlys, descendants of Elizabeth's sister Nancy. Future work remains on the Lockards and the Sanders, descendants of two more of Henry's daughters, Frances Ann and Sarah Ann. A fifth daughter, Lydia A., who married William S. Cardell, appears to have left no offspring, so there are no Cardells to wade through (unliked the Sweitzers, Siberlys, Lockards, and Sanders), thank goodness..

The Siverly family is exceedingly large. Nancy Tapscott and William Siverly, had eight children who lived to adulthood. Six of the eight, married and left children. Right now, with incomplete research, 215 descendants with 125 spouses have been identified for Nancy and William. Among the family names introduced in the Siverly line are Gummere, Moore, Spencer, Montgomery. If I stick to my goals of provided detailed information on only the first four generations for Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott with the fifth generation merely named, the number of Siverly descendants included will be just a little over 100 with 70 or so spouses. But then there are the families of the spouses ...

At age 76, I sometimes question my wisdom in taking on such a ponderous task One can only hope that this tome does not turn out to be a tomb.