Austin Sweet Sr.

In these blogs, we have often seen the name of Austin Sweet Sr., father of Richard Morgan Sweet, who married Cora Isabelle Tapscott of Clark County, Illinois. Austin Sr., was a veterinarian and farm owner. Here is a story about Austin and two of his grandchildren, Carrie and Mary (“Merrie”) Lowry as told by Mary in her book, The Merry Cricket.

From The Merry Cricket.

As one of the most sought-after veterinarians in the entire countryside, [Grampa Sweet's] practice often took him to some spot near our farm, always to our delight. However, as he had a large farm of his own to work when not out taking care of sick livestock, he could seldom stay long.

Jauntily climbing down from the half-cart, half-buggy in which he made his professional calls, he greeted us all cheerily and gave mother a warm embrace.

This day grampa was in more of a hurry than usual to get back to his farm. His bull, a huge and vicious animal that he kept on a chain in the barn, had been acting up that morning. He was the only one who could do anything with it.

Reluctant to see him go, we all walked out to the road with him. Then, just as he was about to slap his horse with the reins as a signal for it to start rambling off, he suddenly sat up straight, looked at Carrie and me, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and asked if Carrie and I couldn’t go home with him and stay over. We clamored so eagerly mother smilingly consented.

This was a treat, and to make it still more of a treat, grampa let Carrie take the reins and drive us. In truth, the horse knew the way better than Carrie. But he was an amiable animal. Knowing that grampa must have turned the reins over to one of us girls, and sensing that it might be fun to step lively, he picked up his feet and whisked us home smartly.

There were always things to look forward to at grampa’s. There would be wonderful things to eat which pretty Gramma Sweet would prepare especially to delight us. There were strange books to browse over in grampa’s cluttered little office, treatises on animal husbandry with fascinating pictures of sick cows and spavined horses.

And there would be things which grampa would think up for us to do which were always exciting, as the expedition on which he took us that night after dinner.

“Come girls,” he said, when it was dark, “you can help me, I think. This is a good night for it. There’s been a lot of rain lately and the ponds are swollen. Then he filled his lantern, lit it, found a big corn knife, winked at us conspiratorially, and told us to follow him.

We trotted to keep up with him as he walked briskly to a marshy pond not too far from the house. It was a noisy night: the frogs were making such a din we could hardly hear ourselves think. When grampa reached the spot where their croaking was loudest and most distinct he held his lantern down close to the edge of the pond, flicked his knife back and forth and picked up one fat bullfrog after the other, dropping them into our bags. The light blinded them, he explained, and made it easy to stun them with the flat of the blade.

Since it didn’t take long to bag all we could carry, we got back to the house in time for him to cut off the hind legs of the biggest and fattest frogs to gramma to skin and wash them before we went to bed.

A heaping plate full of these was given us the next morning for breakfast. Fried in fresh-churned butter, they were the most deliciously-flavored, finely-textured, white meat anyone had ever tasted.

The England Tapscotts - Visiting England

A few days ago I received a phone call from a fourth cousin once removed. She and some other Tapscott descendants are planning a trip to Tapscott country in England and asked if I had some suggestions. Indeed I do, and I thought others might be interested.

I am going to first quote some paragraphs from my book Henry the Immigrant and then make some suggestions.

West Country

"In the autumn of 2002, to get a feel for our origins, my wife, Mary Frances, and I made a two-week trip to the Exmoor region—a large, rural, and isolated area of moor, forest, and farm. We stayed at a farmhouse inn on the outskirts of Selworthy, a Somerset hamlet of perhaps thirty souls and ten or so houses, most of them medieval, though extensively remodeled in the 1800s. A mile walk to the west was Allerford, a metropolis of fifty houses, or so it was claimed, though outlying farmhouses must have been included, and another mile led to Porlock, large enough to have two pubs and several restaurants, but no bank or ATM. Three miles in the other direction was Minehead, a sizeable town of 10,000, doubling in tourist season. Over a gorse-covered steep hill to the north of the inn, an hour’s climb allowed a view of Bristol Channel. To the south was the heart of Exmoor, which lies in both Devon and Somerset, though mainly in the latter."

"Selworthy looked exactly like the rural English hamlet one imagines as a child when reading Beatrix Potter or A. A. Milne—yellow, thatched-roof cottages, resembling Hobbit dwellings, surrounded by flower gardens and surmounted by large round chimneys. On the lawns were squirrels and pheasants, and the encircling grassy fields pastured sheep and horses. A hundred yards or so from our inn was a 14th-century tithe barn, and a few hundred yards further was the Church of All Saints, dating from the fifteenth century. At this parish church, Tapscotts were baptized, wed, and buried, starting at least as early as 1572 (the parish records only go to 1571). It is in Selworthy that we find some of the earliest Tapscotts recorded."

"I wish I could say that we found numerous stones and monuments with Tapscott names, but we did not, except at Minehead, where Tapscott markers in the St. Michaels Parish churchyard date from the late 1700s. The fact is that the Tapscotts originated more than 4½ centuries ago and most cemetery markers (assuming that they could have been afforded) do not last that long, or at least become totally unreadable. At the Somerset Studies Library, in Taunton, with the help of librarian David Bromwich, and from other sources, we did, however, find written records (or transcriptions) of Tapscotts who flourished around Exmoor in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s. The name then starts fading, particularly after 1850 or so, until today only three Tapscott households are found in all of Somerset and only fifty-eight,in all of England (based on phone listings)."

Now some suggestions

1. Before you go, read Lorna Doone to get a feel for the countryside. Most of the villages named in this fictional book were Tapscott places.
2. The early Tapscotts were all in the “West Country,” in the counties of Devon and Somerset. There is more than enough to see in those counties without going elsewhere in England. (Not that the rest of England is uninteresting.)
3. An automobile is essential. Much of the area is rural without good transportation. You can learn to drive on the left. I did.
4. Pick a place to stay for several days (or weeks) and then travel various destinations each day. A farmhouse B&B is best. Unfortunately that in Selworthy is no longer operating. A B&B in a small village is next best. In England, B&Bs are generally cheaper and have larger rooms than hotels. And you can get information from your hosts about history and geography of the area.
5.           You must see:
   ·     Selsworthy: Location of many early Tapscotts. The Periwinkle Tea Room (though not a Tapscott site) should not be missed. And of course the local church is a must.
   ·       Porlock: A Tapscott site with great pub food (pub food is generally best).
   ·       Minehead: A more recent Tapscott site with Tapscott gravestones at the church. It is the largest town in the area and it has ATMs. Most small villages do not.
   ·    Stoke Pero: Very remote location of the earliest recorded Tapscott and an ancient church.
   ·       Oare: Location of another remote church, attended by Tapscotts.
   ·       Exmoor: Great for hiking and sightseeing (wild ponies). No towns.
6. If you have time, the following towns, also occupied at one time or another by early Tapscotts are worthy of a visit: Stogumber, North Molten, High Ham, Bridgewater, Exeter, Culmstock. You can go to the Somerset Studies Library in Taunton and find lots of records with the Tapscott name, but Mary Frances and I did an extensive search when we were there and it is unlikely that anything new will appear. But who knows?
7. Finally, if you visit the the West Country around September or October, be certain to go to a harvest festival. These are usually organized by churches and give you a chance to meet the locals. Mary Frances and I went to one in a small hamlet whose name I forget, and got a lecture on cutting meat by the local butcher. Sounds boring, but it wasn't. We had an absolutely outstanding time. Perhaps it was the wine and beer.

Have fun

From a Branch to a Twig

An earlier blog (28 January 2016) noted that patrilineal (direct male) descendants of Henry Tapscott, The Immigrant, likely all belonged to R-Z8, my haplogroup and a branch on the Y-Chromosone phylogenetic tree. Further testing now shows that my sublclade (a smaller branch, “twig”?) is R-S18890 (also known as R1b1a1a2a1a1c2b2a1b1a1a2b2). Going from the very large branch of M343 to the twig at S18890, we have M343 > L389 > P297 > M269 > L23 > L51 > U106 > Z381 > Z301 > L48 > Z9 > Z30 > Z2 > Z7 > Z8 > Z338 > Z11 > Z341 > Z12 > Z8175 > FGC12057 > S18890, where green indicates positive tests (my verified branches) and brown indicates presumed positive tests (my presumed branches). R-S18890 is probably the haplogroup for all patrilineal descendants of Henry the Immigrant.

A few days ago I received a letter from Annie Barnes, wife of Harvey Barnes, informing me that Harvey, a product of Cornwall, England, also has the haplogroup R-S18890. It is highly likely that Harvey and we Tapscotts have a common patrilineal ancestor, possibly before family names were used, explaining the two different names, “Barnes” and “Tapscott”. And since Harvey and we are known to have matches with Family Group 5 of the Family Tree DNA Bolling Project (http://www.bolling.net/family-group/5), members of that group presumably also share a common ancestor with us.

At that point, I would have stopped since my major interest is in relatively recent history and I am no expert in ancient genealogy. But, it turns out that Annie Barnes is much more knowledgeable than I am in that area. She has published a very informative posting on the migration patterns for Haplogroup R-S18890 and their progenitors (http://www.hibbitt.org.uk/dna/y-dna-barnes.html) and though the posting is for Harvey, it probably applies equally well for patrilineal descendants of Henry the Immigrant. Read it. It’s a great piece of writing.

An Uncertain Life, Part 3

Elizabeth, widow of John Tapscott, and her new husband, Oliver York, soon found that they were being omitted in legal notices about sales of John’s estate. Oliver, Elizabeth, and William Tapscott, John’s brother and administrator, came to an agreement. At the June 1872 term of the Clark County court, agreeing not to press the lack of notification, “Elizabeth E. York & Alvin [Oliver?] York waive further process and enter this appearance being as fully as if they had been served with process two days before the present term of this court.” By 21 June 1872 notices of sales of John Tapscott’s estate included the phrase “subject to the widow’s dower.”

The term “widow’s dower” in William Tapscott’s newspaper notices last appears in a 23 Oct 1873 announcement in the Marshall Weekly Messenger. Then Elizabeth and Oliver York disappear, never to be seen again. What happened to them? Nobody knows, or at least are not saying.

Administration of John Tapscott’s estate drug on for years, and William was under continuous legal harassment for not settling debts. Finally, in Dec 1891, over two decades after John’s death, William “Tabscott” issued a final report, showing $670.24 received from estate sales and 732.88 paid out, including $125.40 going to John’s widow. John had left a burden, not a benefit. The final report included William’s comment

“The undersigned states that he believes the foregoing report to be accurate but that he believes that he has been for a number of years unable to find the papers in said court concerning said estate … and that this report or one due in this case would have been made years ago but for the absence of said papers, which he hopes to be able to get but can not.

An Uncertain Life, Part 2

We left our last post with the death of John Tapscott. On 2 Nov 1871 in Clark County his widow, Elizabeth, married Oliver York. Oliver was born around 1834 or 1835 in Kentucky to John and Drusilla York. On 23 Sep 1830, John York had made bond to marry Drusilla Black in Bracken County, Kentucky. During the 1840s (based largely on children’s ages) John, Drusilla, and their four children (Melvina, Aven, Oliver, and Amanda) arrived in Clark County, Illinois, from Kentucky. (Around the time that John Tapscott's parents had made a similar trip.)

Trees Referencing Trees

We know relatively little of John, Drusilla, and their family. But that is not one sees when looking at family trees on Ancestry.com. Seldom has one seen such ridiculous, scandalously undocumented, and laughable trees. Drusilla Black has become “Drusilla Eveningstar” (in one case, a native American, “Druscilla Princess Eveningstar”); John, who is sometimes from Ulster, New York, marries Drusilla in Clark County, Illinois, even though their children are all born in Kentucky; and their son Aven is morphed into Aven Hall York, who just happened to have the same first name, but the wrong birth date, birthplace, and residence. Of course, the only sources for most of the posted information are other trees. Trees referencing trees. Well, enough polemics.

John Tapscott’s brother, William, took over administration of John’s estate, which was much more difficult that William expected. For two years he tried to settle debts, but failed to do so. Then on 17 May 1872 he published a notice in the Marshall Herald announcing an 18 Jun 1872 court hearing to sell two 40-acre plots of John’s land “or as much thereof as shall be necessary to pay debts against the estate of said John Tapscott. deceased.” Summoned to appear in court were most of John’s living siblings and the children of those deceased, along with husbands in the case of women (sorry, that’s the way things were). Named were

(1) Thomas Tapscott

(2) orphaned children of Jacob Tapscott

Lavina, Andrew, Margaret. Ann

(3) Sarah Ann (Tapscott) Sanders, William Sanders

(4) Frances (Tapscott) Lockard, Samuel Lockard

(5) Lydia (Tapscott) Cardell, William Cardell

(6) Major Tapscott

But some siblings were missing. William, of course, since he was the person arranging the court action, but also James W. Tapscott, Nancy (Tapscott) Siverly, Elizabeth (Tapscott) Sweitzer, and Samuel Tapscott. James may have been deceased by the time the notice was published. His death date is uncertain. But the others were certainly living. Were there separations within the family? Later in life Elizabeth exhibited a rather free spirited lifestyle that could cause familial problems (see Enigmatic Sweitzers, 29 May 2016, 30 May 2016) but the court action notice was published before her nonconformist activities. Of Samuel, there is no doubt. He was  a bounder (posting of 25 Jun 2015). If not rejected from family activities he surely should have been. And Nancy? Other than indications of a low economic position and her husband’s illiteracy, probably because he was German-born, there seems to be nothing to set the Siverlys apart. But, of course, family feelings could not legally eliminate heirs. And there was another missing heir—John’s widow.

We will look at that with our next posting.

An Uncertain Life, Part 1

I am still working on the Clark County, Illinois, Tapscotts, having just finished the life of Henry and Susan (Bass) Tapscott’s oldest child, William. We know a lot about William, his wife Mary Angeline Wallace, and his 960 known descendants (with 674 known spouses). We cannot say the same about his brother John.

The life of Henry and Susan’s second son, John Tapscott, is largely uncertain. We know almost nothing about his wife, who appears from nowhere and then disappears. He had no children, who could have served as a source of information. Extant Clark County Newspapers are almost nonexistent for the latter half of 1870, when John is believed to have died. Death records were not mandated in Illinois until 1877. And his grave marker is so worn that transcriptions are suspect.

John’s badly eroded marker (2014).

Census data indicate that John was born between 1827 and 1829 in, as expected, Kentucky, presumably, Green County. Since John’s Auburn Cemetery grave marker gives his age and date of death, one should be able to calculate a birth date. But two transcriptions of the badly eroded stone, one by your author, give death dates that cannot be correct, 23 May 1850 and 28 Aug 1850. Since probate records show that letters of administration were issued to John’s brother William on 2 Sep 1870, and since John appears in the 1870 Anderson Twp census, the year is certainly 1870 rather than 1850 and August is the more likely month. Accordingly, John’s death date is hesitantly taken as 28 Aug 1870. His age at death is also uncertain. Two grave marker transcriptions give slightly different ages — 41y 2m 14d and 41y 2m 12d, but the major problem is that the number of years, though agreeing in the two transcriptions, is suspect. The latter age allows calculation of a birth date of 16 Jun 1829, in reasonable accordance with ranges calculated from census data, but still questionable.

John took up farming with much of his eventual 160 acres of Anderson Twp land originally belonging to his father. On 15 Apr 1858 in Clark County he married Elizabeth E. Canady, whose middle initial is found only in John’s probate records.

Elizabeth is even more obscure. Born between 1829 and 1832 in Ohio, her parentage is unknown. A number of Canady families lived in 19-century Clark County, but none appear to fit the bill. In 1850 an Elizabeth “Canaday” born in Ohio was living in Darwin Twp. Right location and date to meet John Tapscott and right birthplace, but with a clearly written age of 6 on the census, she cannot be our Elizabeth, unless, of course, the census enumerator made an error. Unfortunately the Canadays disappear from Clark County.

As we have already seen, John died 28 Aug 1870 (or so) at the very young age of 41 (or so) and was interred in Auburn Cemetery. But neither the story nor the mysteries end there, as we will see in a future post.

Emma Pearl Sweet

An earlier posting—Thursday, November 12, 2015—mentions the 8 Jul 1922 death of Wabash Valley Tapscott Emma Pearl (Sweet) Waymire, owing to the collision of an automobile with Emma’s horse-drawn buggy.

Emma Pearl Sweet was one of Richard Morgan Sweet and Cora Isabelle Tapscott’s fourteen childen (posting, Monday, November 21, 2016). Born 12 Oct 1892, Emma married Benjamin Harrison (“Ben”) Waymire, a Chrisman, Illinois, farmer on 5 Mar 1912. At this point someone is going to point out that the Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths index states that Emma was born 12 Oct 1890 and that Ben Waymire’s obituary states that he and Emma were married in 1916. Indeed they do, and they are both wrong.

Photo courtesy of Robert L. Maxwell.

Emma led a short and sometimes tragic life. Before she died at age 29 in that violent automobile/buggy accident, Emma had seen the loss of two of her three children. Her first-born (28 Nov 1913) child, Harold Benjamin Waymire, died at age 2. Her other son, John Morgan Waymire, died 26 Feb 1922, after living only three days and dying the same year his mother met her tragic end.

A marker in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Martinsville Township, is inscribed with the names of Emma, her husband Ben Waymire, and children Harold and John. Despite the marker, however, Benjamin is not buried with Emma. He is interred with his second wife, Mary (Combs) in the Marshall, Illinois, City Cemetery. The others on the Waymire marker—Emma, Harold, and John—do, however, rest in Mount Pleasant.

Emma and Ben’s third child, Sarah Helen, lived much longer than her siblings. Born 8 Dec 1919, and raised after her mother's death by her grandparents, Sarah reached age 78, passing away 23 Feb 1998. But she almost didn’t make it. She had been in the buggy with her mother when it was struck by the automobile.