Long before I became motivated to actually ACT on my curiosity about the Tapply family, Mark Tapply and Jon Tapply were on the case. Jon has shared with me some of the correspondence which I will transcribe here. This is an object lesson on a family game of 'telephone'. One person makes a mistake, it gets repeated and before you know it you have 'facts' that are anything BUT. It started with Barrister Tapply. Alan Tapply who wrote The Tapplys of Kent. No doubt he did the best he could with what he had pre-internet. But as I dug and dug and dug I could find NOTHING proving our line came from James Gilbee Tapply. If you look at the tree above, which I believe came from Alan, you see James of Maidstone. I can find no such person attributed to James Gilbee. In fact, as I got access to English christening records I found my grandfather, his brother George, his sister Elizabeth and his brother Thomas. All were attributed to James Henry Tapply and his wife Elizabeth. I found records for George and Harry and Ann as well.
Here is Thomas's death record in Newton. I have christening records for all the children in the tree in the last blog post. They all show James Henry. Then I stepped back one generation.
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| James Henry's birth |
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| James Henry's death |
So the death record is a bit hard to read here, but his father was John (shoemaker in the tree above) and Sarah Lansdell or Lansell. This would explain Aunt Bea's middle name. This is the cordswainer I wrote about in a previous post.
So why so many mistakes? Well, the tree is full of Johns, James, Charles, Edward and Georges. They all lived in a small area in Kent and Sussex. Records weren't great or incomplete. People relied on family stories. And there was no internet. But the records are there if you know where to look. I got lucky tracing back through Charles to James Henry to John. As I fleshed out the records for Charles's brothers it became obvious that Barrister Tapply had missed some steps somewhere. So I will go through the letters and then try to explain.
First, a letter that came to Robert Tapply's wife, Bethel:
Dear Mrs. Tapply,
Greetings from one Tapply to another,
Recently I responded to an organization calling themselves “Burke’s peerage” for a family heritage book including details of the whereabouts of all the other Tapplys around the world. As our name is not very common I thought this would be interesting. In the event the book turned out to be a standard publication on the origins and migrations of man, the origin and meaning of “Names”, how Coats of Arms originated and how to “Discover your Ancestors”. The only original submission was the address of 49 Tapplys worldwide! This was obviously not comprehensive since one of our own sons living here in England was omitted! However, your name was included and my wife and I thought it would be interesting to make contact with you to wish you well and enquire if perhaps we shared any close ties from the past.
My father, Hugh Lansdell, who died before his time in 1946, was a civil servant. A cousin had contacted him before the 30/45 war and had subsequently produced a book entitled “The Tapleys or Tapplys of Kent by Alan Tapply of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law” I attach Appendix A and extract from a Genealogical Table which forms part of the book, which, incidentally, I find a bit difficult to follow in spite of the fact that it is clearly based on much scholarly research. This Table may help you to identify some forebears.
Reproduced below are a couple of paragraphs which lead to the inclusion of my name and that of my sister:
There was an excerpt from Alan's Tapply's book HERE.
When war came in 1939 I was 13 and with a friend we dug a hole in the garden and covered it with railway sleepers and earth. Immediately after hearing the war declaration the siren went and we all trooped down into our hole and stuffed bits of old sheet into every air hole to keep the gas out! But nothing happened and the ‘all clear’ sounded. After a period of phoney war the London air raids started. At that point father was transferred to a new factory making Erickson Guns at Newport in Monmouthshire, South Wales. My mother was glad because she thought it would be safer. But it wasn’t because the air raids became very heavy over South Wales and we spent many a night under our diningroom table which, in common with many folk at the time, was a “Morrison Shelter” made of metal with wire-mesh cage sides. Father used to go out fire-watching and often came back with bits of jagged metal from the bursting antiaircraft shell which landed in the streets.
On the 31st of August 1944, I joined the army and reported to a training establishment near Newcastle. After six weeks I was selected as a potential officer and went via Aldershot training battalion and pre-OCTU at Wrotham in Kent to an OCTU in the Isle of Man(which seemed about as far away from the war as one could get in the UK) Anyway, the war in Europe was over by then so we were busy learning about jungle warfare ready to be sent to the Far East. I arrived in Bombay as a young subaltern in the Royal Sussex Regiment for onward posting not to the Indian Army as expected but to the West African Frontier Force Reece Regiment with 82 West African Division upcountry in Burma. Once again the war ended before I got there! Soon we were off by troopship to Nigeria to demob our soldiers. This we did and then I seemed doomed to spend the remaining year of my service at Kaduna in Northern Nigeria. A fellow officer and I discovered that the only quick way home to England and English girls was to volunteer for a regular commission- something I had not thought of before! It worked like a charm and in ten days we were on a plane via the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Lisbon in Portugal to dear old England. Of course we then had to attend the selection procedure for regular commissions. As a result I was offered a regular commission in the Royal Army Service Corps. It was that option or going in penury to university so I was glad to accept. I then married Audrey Barlow who had been in the WRENS and I/we saw service in Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, Kenya, Jamaica, North Africa, various UK postings leading to a final two year period with the Gurkha Division in Malaysia. By this time we had three children, Pip, Nick and Mark, but long periods apart do not help a marriage and, unfortunately, it fell apart. Whilst in Malaya I had decided to leave the Army at the age of 42 and try my luck in the big outside world. The children had all been at boarding school for some years and the parting of the ways of their parents didn’t seem to affect them too badly. By the time I left the service I had been fortunate enough to meet and team up with my present wife, formerly Edna Williams, an actress and drama teacher. With school fees to meet we attacked the challenge of building a new life with a will. Edna worked wherever I went. By another stroke of good luck I got a job the day after my service expired on April Fool’s Day 1968 to be exact, as East London Divisional Manager with Group 4, the Security Company. At that time, compared with the enormous international organization it is today, it was a relatively small organization. Helping to get the Company to its present position has been an immensely exciting adventure. I became General Manager of the Southern Regional Group 4, based in London and then Managing Director of the Irish Republic Company, based in Dublin, and then Operations Director of the whole of the UUK, retiring from an executive position in 1989. Since then I have acted as Chairman of the Northern Ireland Company which I formed whilst Managing Director in the Irish Republic and I finally retired from this position just this week as I approach the age of 70, have fully qualified as an ‘old fart’.
During all these exciting times the children have all married and each have three smashing children of their own. Pip married the heir to Lord Bolton and lives among the family acres (18,00 of them) in Wensley, North Yorkshire. Nick married Jenny Charlier, is a police inspector, and lives in the beautiful village of Saltwood, near Hythe, in Kent. (note we all seem to be pulled to that County!) And Mark married Debbie Holland and they have just gone off to live in Connecticut, where Mark, who has been with IBM as a Purchasing Manager for several years, has the enormous task of reorganizing his company’s purchasing systems worldwide. We
We are off to visit them next week for two weeks.
I trust I haven’t bored you to death with this brief history, but I thought that, if I'm approaching you to see if we have some common family past, I should tell you something of this member of the Tapply Clan.
With very best wishes,
Yours truly,
Pete
(Peter Lansdell Tapply)
Jon came upon the letter and wrote to him. Here is the reply:
Dear Jon,
Many thanks for your most interesting letter. From what you tell me I think that there is a strong possibility that your great-grandfather was my grandfather’s brother. It all fits with what I remember Grandpa George saying when we stayed with him and his wife, Fanny, in their retirement home at Lympne in Kent. Before retirement I understood that he worked for the Post Office in Brighton which is where his son, my father, met May Garland, my mother. The time when my grandfather’s brother went to America would fit with the dates you give. I don’t recall mention of a sister emigrating but that is not to say that this did not occur.
From another Tapply member now resident in the Isle of Mull in Scotland I received a letter (copy attached) together with a pretty comprehensive family tree (copy also attached). If my idea that we may be cousins is correct you are also connected with Robin Tapply, who wrote the letter, via a rather tortuous route! I have added to Robin’s family tree the two outlined additions which show your family (if I am right) and my family extensions.
My son Mark is working at present at the IBM headquarters in Somers, NY. He and his family are living in Connecticut (personal details noted) He is about your age (37 to be exact). I mentioned to him on the phone the other day that I had heard from you and he would be keen to meet your sometime. I will send him a copy of your letter and this one with its attachments.
My wife Edna-busy at present making a display for our daughters church flower festival in Wensley, North Yorkshire- and I would also be very happy to meet with you either over here
If you are visiting or, alternatively, in the US on our next visit to Mark- we were last there in April this year.
Whilst I’m at it I’ll enclose a letter from another Mark Tapply who replied from Auckland, New Zealand to my original letter. It is interesting that he refers to Uncle George in Brighton. He also refers to his granny who lived on Montpelier Street in Brighton. This is odd because my mother lived in Montpelier Square or Gardens in Brighton. Small world ain’t it?
With kind regards,
Pete
(Peter Lansdell Tapply)
Then there is the letter from New Zealand, from Mark Lawrence Tapply:
Dear Fellow Tapply
Many thanks for the copy of your family tree. My son is over in England at the moment so my reply is for both of us. Although your tree does not appear to link up with me it does appear coincidental that my father came from Sussex next to Kent. He left Brighton prior to the 1st World War. He was Ronald Tapply. I was born in Buckinghamshire in 1916. As a child I stayed with grandma who lived in Momthelan (?)St. Brighton. I don’t know her christened name- she was just gran to me. I had an uncle George in Brighton- I never met him but I have a vague idea that my mother said he was a bookmaker. My father’s sister married a Patterson. My two cousins were both RAF officers during the 2nd war. I was army. I have only met two people with the surname Tapply in my lifetime- one was in about 1934. A lady divorced from her husband and apparently we were related. Her ex-husband the other W.O. in the army during the war. May- with my son he is divorced with two daughters living in Australia. It is very unlikely he will remarry but he might.
Once again thank you for the copy of the family tree. Wishing you all well.
Mark L Tapply
Mark is correct. Tapply is NOT a very common name actually. To see more on that look at a previous blog post HERE.
And finally, there is a letter from Robin Tapply of Mull. And here we have a real mishmosh of Sussex Tapplys, Maidstone Tapplys and Wittersham Tapplys. Remember what I said about all the similar names?
Dear Jon,
Thank you for your fascinating letter of 14 March. Every time I think I am beginning to make sense of the family tree a new growth appears!
The only information I have on James of Maidstone is that he had two brothers, Edward, who dies a young man and George of Tunbridge Wells who had two sons – (name unknown) and Ernest. More by inference than direct fact, one deduces him to have been the son of James Gilbee, who is quite well documented.
Mention is also made of ‘John Henry Tapply of Maidstone, bricklayer” who proved what may have been a cousin’s will in 1879 (the deceased being Elizabeth, aged 59, possibly a daughter of John of Wittersham). The trail is a bit murky.
My son, with his wife and son, live in Kent and always intend to revisit the family tombs to see whether any more facts can be gleaned. I have seen some of them- but it is too easy to be side-tracked into visiting the pubs the family used to own. (One of our ancestors had the sense to marry the innkeeper’s daughter and thus inherited the pub). The area in Kent which bred most of the recorded Tapply ancestors is comparatively small; the churchyards are some of the oldest in the country and though many of the tombstones are legible, there are a lot of them. The author of ‘The Tapplys of Kent” did a very good job; regrettably it appears the war stopped him from producing a second, and more detailed edition.
I have correspondence concerning a family branch that went to Australia voluntarily but since returned. My only American leads are through William G Tapply, the writer of crime novels.
(gives his address) He hoped his father would write to me about their ancestry but I have heard nothing. I don’t think he knows we moved to Mull from Edinburgh in 1986.
Tracing ancestors and following the clues is more than a full-time occupation and I have only dabbled with it since I retired from the Royal Navy in 1980. I then spent five years working in Edinburgh for a Conservation Trust and then retired here. This small community keeps us occupied with various voluntary jobs while the garden keeps my wife out of too much trouble. Currently she is helped by a 9-month old Cavalier King Charles puppy who digs things faster than she can plant them. As we live on granite with a small layer of peaty earth on top, surrounded by salt water and blessed by strong winds, gardening here has similar problems to yours.
My son travels the world inspecting the books of the Standard Chartered Bank; his 8 year old son goes to school in Tunbridge. His wife teaches on a fairly erratic basis, as she ‘fills in’ for absentees. She has access to proper historians and tries to help my amateurish quests.
My daughter works at a variety of jobs in Vienna where she lives with her recently acquired husband, who come from Madras but also works in Vienna.
The daughter of my father’s first wife lives in Bath and at the ripe age of 86 is a useful source of family data. Unfortunately few written records were kept and only recently have people realized what has been lost by this neglect.
My wife’s family is worse hit as many records of her Irish ancestors were deliberately destroyed during ‘The Troubles’.
Let me know if there are any other leads to investigate. Progress is usually slow but every now and then a piece fall into place and the ‘Tree’ becomes clearer.
Yours Sincerely,
Robin
R M Tapply MBE
Sadly the whole pedigree with James of Maidstone, George of Tunbridge Wells and Edward is so convoluted that I don't know where to start. The names that fit are all relatives of the very same John the cordswainer. His brothers, his sons, and well, you get the picture. As I collected birth records, death records and census papers it began to work itself out. The George of Tunbridge is John's son. The James may have been John's brother James who also married a Sarah- Sarah Colebrook. Or it could even have been James Henry himself or his son, who both lived in Maidstone. There is also a line that goes off into Sussex. Not even sure where to begin with that.
The letter-writers here are outlined in red. The colors indicate different generations. Mark and Peter are in the same generation. Robin Mark is one removed. There are notes where the tree suggests the ideas in the letters. Click through to enlarge.
So what conclusions can we draw:
Do your research carefully from the bottom up always looking for birth, marriage and death records to support your conclusions.
A partial Tapply tree - Verify very old records with supporting documents if possible. A prime example are the Kent parish records Alan would have relied on. They have simple first and last names. Often no maiden names for women. Frequently nothing to indicate relationships like "son of". They are very difficult to use for this reason. Especially when there is a John and Ann in EVERY generation.
- Try not to rely on family stories without something to back it up.
- Try not to commit to guesses. Indicate they are guesses. See the Ann Taply next to James Henry who married one Isaac White? This is MARY Tapply Alan has this as James' daughter Ann. Look carefully at years and generations and see if your conclusions make sense.
- No matter who passes along a tree to you, do YOUR OWN legwork to verify.
- Oh, and try to at least collect stories from the older generation before they are gone. They give you a place to start.
I'm glad we have the stories of these three men and their families in any case. It gives us a place to start in documenting the current generation. We shouldn't forget them either.
