Clark County Tingleys

In response to a couple of people who have contacted me recently about Tapscott connections to Tingleys, I have written the following.

A large number of Tingleys have inhabited Clark County and many still do. There are 113 known to be interred in the county, among which are 17 in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery and 41 in Marshall Cemetery. The 1940 census lists 73 Clark County people with the surname “Tingley” (only 19 Tapscotts). And my genealogy database includes 156 Tingleys, almost all from Clark County and all of whom are related or, at least, connected to me. But I know of only two instances, worldwide, of a person with the surname "Tapscott" marrying a person named "Tingley," both of which occurred in Clark County. (There is a third case if one allows the use of the last name “Tingley” for Nettie Sarah Walls/Tingley/Sweitzer, who married Carl Herman Tapscott, blog of 18 Aug 2015). Most Tingleys in my database are connected to me by marriages to relatives who do not bear the surname “Tapscott,” though they may be Tapscott descendants, and to in-laws or in-laws of in-laws.

In the most recent instance of a Tapscott marrying a Tingley, my aunt Nellie Pearl Tapscott married Walter Albert Tingley on 23 Feb 1919 in Marshall, Illinois, and had two children, my cousins. Walter was the son of James William and Christina Aldora (Taylor) Tingley and the great grandson of Samuel Tingley Sr., one of the first Tingleys in Clark County. I remember visiting my Tingley aunt, uncle, and cousins on their farm near Sidell in Vermilion County, Illinois, a little less than an hour’s drive or so north of Marshall. In every way the farm and the family was American picturesque.

The other, much earlier, Tapscott/Tingley marriage was by no means picturesque. Five years after his trial for murdering a man (blog 25 Jun 2015), my great great uncle Samuel Tapscott was forced to marry Susan Tingley, who was pregnant with his child. From the 12 Jul 1876 Clark County Herald:

Susan M. Tingley appeared before Squire Martin, one day last week, and swore to the fact of Samuel Tapscott being the father of her infant child, as yet unborn. The squire issued a warrant for Samuel to appear before him, and show cause why things were thusly. It was put into the hands of Constable Frank Jenney, who found the soon-to-be-daddy, at Ben Ohm's and brought him in. The young lady confronted him, and he thought better to marry her than to go into trial. A license was procured. Beuse [sic] performed the ceremony, and pair left happy.

The third Clark County Courthouse in
Marshall (1837-1889) was the site for both

 marriage and arraignments for Samuel.

Whether or not they really "left happy," the couple went on to have several children. Marriage did not reform Samuel who went from murder to horse stealing, robbery, malicious mischief, and assault (blog 13 Sep 2015). His final incarceration in the Chester, Illinois, penitentiary may have proved too much for Susan, for she is not found in the 1900 census or any later documents. Did she adopt a new identity? take a new husband? go into hiding? At the time this was first written, we did not know. But we were to find out.

All geneological data reported in these blogs are based on primary and/or reputable secondary sources, or transcriptions thereof, and never on online trees. Contact the author to request sources, which have been omitted here to improve readability.

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.