Memorial Day 2025

WB Rogers

This is a photo I have posted before. This grave is a cenotaph for Winslow Brainard Rogers. A cenotaph is a memorial  that was put in place in Grove Cemetery in Holden, Massachusetts after the Civil War. There was an organization that put them up everywhere and sometimes the government was involved. We don't know where he is really buried. Because he died of smallpox in the plague hospital in Vicksburg, it's doubtful he has his own stone there. More likely he is in one of the mass graves. Perhaps someday I'll know for sure. But I'm glad that kind folks go out and put up the flags. I think about him on this day.

Some Far-Flung Tapply Cousins

As some of you know, our great grandfather Charles Tapply had six siblings. This story is about his younger brother George and his great-granddaughter Phillippa or "Pip".  George settled in Kent and raised his children there. His grandson, Peter, would have been my mother's second cousin. Pip was my third cousin. Pip Tapply married Henry Lord Powlett the 8th Baron of Bolton.

The Baron of Bolton is the direct descendant of Richard LeScrope who built a castle over 600 years ago in Wensley, North Yorkshire. Imagine being the member of a family who has lived on the same plot of land for over 600 years! There is an extensive bit of land with a large home, gardens, and the remains of the castle.

Bolton castle

Pip Tapply found herself with a full-time job. She and her husband had three boys. The family still lives in Bolton Hall. The castle has long since become unlivable. However, as with Lord and Lady Carnavon at Highclere (think Downton Abbey) the Orde-Powletts have had to scramble to make the property pay for itself. There are reenactments, castle tours, a gift shop, vacation rentals and all manor of income-producing ventures. You can read more about that here.

Bolton Hall

In my ramblings on the internet for obituaries, I ran across an obituary. First, hers then his.

Pippa and Henry (Lord and Lady Bolton)

Here is the obit I found in a Yorkshire paper. It gives you some feel for the kind of person she was:

"A DALES woman deeply ingrained in the local community has died following a short illness.

Philippa Anne Orde-Powlett, 64, better known as Lady Bolton, or simply Pip, from Wensley, near Leyburn, was a keen gardener and avid supporter of events in the local area, including the Dales Festival of Food and Drink.

Lord and Lady Bolton regularly opened their gardens at Bolton Hall in Wensley to the public, although this year’s opening has been cancelled.

Mrs Orde-Powlett had also been a supporter of tramp Mel Bird who was a fixture of Leyburn Market Place in the early 2000s - prompting headlines about the unlikely alliance between the lady and the tramp - before Mr Bird’s actions caused him to fall out of favour with Lady Bolton.

She was an organiser of the Wensley Flower Show at Holy Trinity Church Wensley - a two-day festival featuring displays of flowers that represent many diverse musical tastes and has included the opera La Boheme, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Elvis themed displays.

Gerald Hodgson, an organiser of the Dales Festival of Food and Drink, said he was deeply shocked to hear of the death of Lady Bolton, who had been a supporter of the event from its early days.

He said: “Each year at the festival she hosted a lunch for the speakers and other guests. I know all our guests really appreciated the warm and friendly way she looked after them.

“She was a keen supporter of the festival and was a well known, friendly member of the local community. My deep condolences go to her family.”

Lady Bolton was a much loved wife, mother and grandmother. A private family cremation service will be followed by a service of celebration and thanksgiving for her life at Holy Trinity Church Wensley, on Thursday, May 26 at 2pm."

Looking a little further, I found his obituary as well from 2023.

A celebration and thanksgiving for the life of Harry Algar Nigel Orde-Powlett, 8th Baron Bolton, was held last Friday following his death from cancer at the age of 69.

The service was held near his beloved home, the Bolton Estate in Wensleydale, at Holy Trinity Church, Wensley. Lord Bolton leaves three sons, eight grandchildren and his second wife Valerie. 

He was renowned as a humanitarian and determined custodian and environmentalist, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds in his lifetime for charity and setting up British Direct Aid, which delivered vital aid to Bosnia during the war in the former Yugoslavia, and later to Rwanda.

His eldest son Tom told the congregation: “Dad was fearless and tough, physically and mentally and an adventurer at heart. He was always up early, even in his last few days, he was up and dressed in good time.

“He was very determined and if he wanted to do something nothing would deter him. He cared passionately about the estate and always strived for the highest standards of stewardship. He achieved this with distinction, leaving the estate in better condition environmentally, socially and economically than when he inherited it.”

In his youth he was a daredevil amateur jump jockey and accident-prone amateur pilot, but he became an energetic champion of the family estate in North Yorkshire, winning the largest ever repair grant paid by English Heritage towards the restoration of the medieval family seat, Bolton Castle, as well as a Site of Special Scientific Interest award for work to increase the wildlife value of the estate.

He was a keen huntsman, once swimming across the River Ure after a fox and contracting hypothermia. In 1977 he married Philippa.

Tom added: “In so doing he was blessed with the greatest good fortune, she was the rock at his side and with modesty and quiet determination they achieved so much together.” Philippa died from cancer in 2016. The couple had three sons, Thomas, Benjamin and Nicholas.

During the war in the Balkans the couple started collecting aid and he took it over in a horse box.

There the 8th Baron found warehouses full of supplies but not nearly enough people transporting it to where it was needed so he bought six army Bedford trucks and painted them white, recruiting volunteers to deliver the aid.

At one point they helped rescue 200 Bosnian Muslims, mostly women and children, who had walked 14 miles to escape, with five dying on the way from hyperthermia and others killed by snipers. “That was the beginning of his charity British Direct Aid which grew to a fleet of 51 trucks over a couple of years and they succeeded in getting aid to many people in need, often in desperately harsh conditions,” added Tom.

During the service a tribute was read by his Bosnian translator Ismilda Mallinder, who said without Harry she would not be here today.

“You were a hero to us all, a driving force, the world has lost a very special soul,” she added.

Harry Orde-Powlett became 8th Baron Bolton in 2001 following the death of his father and dedicated much of his time to improving and preserving the estate.

One of his most ambitious efforts to raise money for charity was a solo challenge, abseiling down three of London’s tallest buildings, The Shard, Gherkin and Walkie Talkie, raising £50,000. He married Valerie in 2019.

His son Tom, who has four children, becomes 9th Baron Bolton."

Lord Bolton had rather an exciting life.

The three boys have done well. As you read in the obit, Tom is now the 9th Baron Bolton. He has four children and currently manages the estate. His brother Ben is a retired jockey and has several children. Nicholas runs a company which retrains retired police and military for new careers. 

So if you ever find yourself in Yorkshire....

More Photos from the Smith Branch

 Cousin Andy Cracknell sent along some more photos from the Smith side of the family.

George Smith

Another great photo of my great grandfather George Smith was a pleasant surprise. A much younger photo which gives a real feel for him. Not smiling perhaps, but I see humor in the eyes.

Estill at work

Estill at work at GM Parks Steam and Gas fittings in Fitchburg. It later became Parks-Cramer.

Estill

We think this is Estill as a young man. Just FYI the name Estill goes way back in Letitia's Indiana family. It was originally a surname.

And now the biggest surprise for me. An actual picture of Letitia herself.

Letitia 

Not sure what's wrong with her eye in this picture. Maybe just some clumsy photo editing by an earlier source.

Letitia and Marion

And here she is again with her granddaughter Marion. The biggest surprise for me was NOT the photo of her. Look again.

the Morris chair

I was aware that this Morris chair that was passed along to me was a family piece. I just didn't know its origin. It's been recovered and refinished a few times, but it is a sturdy survivor.

Cora and Harry

Andy knew this was Cora Elizabeth, but not who the child was. I feel reasonably certain this is Harry, my grandfather. Check out the lounge and the wallpaper.

So nice to have these additional family photos.

Happy Life...the Strange Story of Dr. Samuel Milton Archer

 

Dr. Samuel Milton Archer

I knew that Dr. Archer had a very interesting life, but who knew HOW interesting. Dr. Archer was the younger brother of my 3x great grandmother Margaret Archer. He was an early settler in the Salinas Valley in California.  He was married 4 times, twice to the same woman and had a total of 10 children. He became the head of the Monterey County Hospital and a pioneer in the treatment of the ailment once called "dropsy" but now known as edema. 

Samuel grew up in Owen County, Indiana the son of James Milton Archer and Margaret Dunn. Margaret was a member of the pioneer Dunn family who settled the Indiana territory. He was the seventh of ten children.

In 1861 he enrolled as a drummer in the 14 regiment of the Indiana Volunteers and went off to the Civil War. This is where his life takes a fortunate turn. I recently found a feature article written in 2014 by Jim Albanese of the Salinas Californian. Here's how he tells the story:

"But he showed such promise treating wounds and setting bones the Union army permitted him to be discharged from his drumsticks to pursue a medical education" How remarkable!

Samuel got that education and then reenrolled in the 133 Indiana Volunteer Infantry as an assistant surgeon.  That was 1864. Sometime during that period he married his first wife Alma Miranda Lee. Now Dr. Archer served out the remainder of the war and then went for further training in New York. He divorced Alma in 1866.

He married again and divorced pretty quickly from Sarah Maynard. At that point he decided to sign up as a ship's surgeon. Life at sea did not suit him, but luckily he came to that conclusion in San Francisco. 

He was offered the hospital position in 1869, which brought him to Salinas and into contact with a sixteen-year-old Luisa Robinson. Albanese describes her as a spitfire. No doubt considering what followed. They soon had two daughters. I'll let Albanese's version of events tell what followed.

"Archer's job kept him away from home, and Luisa didn't like that. Some of his patients were women and Luisa liked that less.

She accused her husband of all manner of infidelity in front of company. Neighbor Ramona Valenzuela recalled the particularly nasty language Luisa used to berate Archer and how on one visit to the Archer place she found the doctor bleeding from a blow to the head with a candlestick......It all came to a head in November of 1874 when Luisa whacked Archer smack-dab in the forehead with a frying pan."

Remember that in 1874 this would have been a cast iron frying pan. Ouch!

After Dr. Archer recovered from his concussion, he filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized in 1876. By now they had four daughters. 

BUT the story doesn't end there. In May of 1882 Samuel and Luisa got remarried. They went on to have 5 more children. Things seem to have been calmer from this time on. Dr. Archer continued his practice and his stewardship of the hospital. He raised his large family. He took care of his aged mother who had come out to join them. He died in 1902 at the age of 60. Oddly the contributing illness to his death was the very disease he had pioneered treatment for- dropsy or edema.  Luisa died in the 1920's. 

The Smiths- Some New Discoveries

 

The Smiths

First of all, I thought I'd better put up a reference tree for the cousins to check out before I launch into my new discoveries. I was contacted on Ancestry by a cousin. My thanks to my cousins Andy Cracknell and Chuck Dietsche who are descendants of the Estill Smith branch of the family. They supplied the wonderful photos.

Some of the photos they sent I had seen. A few I had bad or cropped copies of. But the photos I have never seen were a revelation. Let's start at the top of the tree. I decided to make use of a little AI to see what I could discover. My Heritage, Ancestry, and Image Colorizer.com will all colorize photos with different results. More on that later.

The picture of Letitia is the same one that hangs on my wall with the family pictures. Although AI is an "intelligent guess" with photos, I have to say this shows her pretty jewelry and brightens her up considerably.

Letitia Ellen Johnson Smith "Ella"- my great, great grandmother

What excited me was the next photo. I had never seen a photo of my great-great grandfather George F Smith.

George F Smith- the railroad man

My Heritage takes a fairly restrained approach. I notice they focused on skin color mostly and didnt' go crazy colorizing everything. 

George F Smith- older

George died in 1915. My guess is this photo is from a period after 1900. I was thrilled to get these photos.

Next is their oldest daughter, Cora Elizabeth, my great grandmother. I know a bit about her because she spent a lot of time with my mother when mom was a child- they lived right next door. I have this photo, but mine was cut down for framing. I love the full version. The details jump right out at you and you really can see a hint of humor in her eyes.

Cora Smith Rogers

We have her brother Estill in the next sets of photos. 

Estill Lowell Smith

I must say that Imagecolorizer.com did a fine job of repairing the scratches and bringing this young photo of Estill to life. Estill, like my great grandfather Ned and my grandfather Harry worked for the City of Fitchburg.

Estill

This slightly older picture wasn't as successful. probably because it's still in the frame.

Here's Estill's wife Bessie Priest. I don't know too much about her, but I must say her daughter Marion looked like her as you will see.

Bessie Priest Smith

I have no pictures of Frederick. Would love to, but they haven't turned up yet.

Finally, we get to the youngest two daughters: Lotta and Clara. I knew Clara as a child- what a character. She lived to be 101 or 102. Neither married. Lotta had a brief local musical career in her young days, but became a hairdresser later and gave up music. Or so the family story goes...

Lotta Mae- a young photo

Lotta was a pretty girl. Talented but maybe troubled as well. She got accolades for her singing in local musicales and quartets. I've been told the whole family was musical.

Lotta Mae

The bonnet and the bouquet of posies is a nice touch. I had a copy of this, but this one is in better condition. And she looks happy here, which is nice.

Clara was the baby. It has been suggested that she was a little spoiled. Perhaps. But I see spirit and humor and intelligence in this photo. And perhaps a strong will. Clara taught kindergartners and first graders all her life. She also spent a good bit of that time looking after Lotta.

Clara Letitia

Here's a slightly later picture of the two girls together. That was them: where Lotta went, Clara was with her.

Lotta and Clara

The colorized version brings out the details of their pretty tops. I don't think I had ever seen this photo either- my framed version was cut down.

This next photo surprised me, because Cora looks very different in the picture. Andy said they were in their choir robes from church.

Cora and Clara

This last photo was the clincher for me. Just too adorable.  From left to right we have my grandfather Harry, my Aunt Dorothy (Deo), and their cousins Marion Smith and Webbie Smith. Dorothy was born about 1903, so my guess is maybe 1905.

Harry Rogers, Dorothy Rogers, Frederick Webster "Webbie" Smith and Marion Smith

Just look at those cute little faces. They must have taken single shots of the children on the same day, because I remember seeing a single photo of Harry in that outfit.

Here is where AI doesn't always get it right. My grandfather Harry had red hair. I mean really red hair. The family called him Uncle Rusty. Neither of these colorizations picked up on that. The photo on the left is Ancestry's version and the one on the right is from ImageColorizer. I think the second one gilds the lily a bit. And you can see how much Marion looked like her mom. 

The four cousins about 1905 or so...

And lastly, if you want, My Heritage will animate your photos. So I took the sweet photo of Lotta and tried it out. They zoom right in on the face and that's what animates. I think the eyes do something weird. Cool or creepy? You decide.

I'm very pleased with this new collection of photos.

Joseph Jerome Harrington

In my continuing search for the members of Cassandria Hooper Harrington Rogers Kauffman's birth family, I'm always trolling for new records. Here again is what  know about her. All her records say she was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. But those records don't specify "city of " or "county". In my experience, it's often somewhere in the county. She appears in the 1850 census as a mill girl, married my great, great grandfather and had two children. He went off to the Civil War and died. She lived for a while with members of the Rogers family but eventually remarried.  She was married to William Kauffman and died just after the turn of the century. Her death record in Orange, Ma says father's name "Joseph" and mother's name "Nancy". Her marriage record to my gg grandfather says the same. 

I have never found reliable records for either parent in Massachusetts. There is a marriage in Oxford which for various reasons I have doubts about. I have never found other siblings, a death record, anything I could verify.

My gg grandfather left  behind a packet of letters from the war and in that packet were two letters to Cassandria from her brother: Joseph Jerome Harrington Jr.. The records I ordered from the National Archives refer to his name as Joseph Harrington (alias Jerome). Apparently he went by Jerome. He was a corporal in the 51st infantry. I found a few census records that I believe are him. And I found a death record in a veteran's hospital in Chelsea. It sounds like he was in bad shape at the end of his life. His death record says father's name "Joseph" and mother name "? Green". Parents from Connecticut. So armed with that I narrowed them down to Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut. I found a marriage record with the last name spelled Harrenton, but no birth, no confirmation of family connections and no death.

Once DNA came along I got a few hits for descendants of the Green family. So I'm on the right track. Still nothing for the Harringtons.

So back to Joseph Jerome. I went back to the state death record and found he was buried in Mountain View Cemetery right in Shrewsbury. He wasn't on FindaGrave. So I wrote the town clerk and told him where and when I thought he was buried. What followed was truly and act of genealogical kindness.

This nice guy named Kevin told me first of all there was no charge to look up the lot card. Most cemeteries charge for everything these days. He discovered that Jerome was buried in the GAR plot in an unmarked grave.

Jerome's burial place

The black bar is where we think he is buried. So he went out, did the probe, took the picture and then contacted the veteran's agent to have a small metal marker put on this spot. All on his own initiative. He sent me records he and the agent found including a small obit.

the obit

So Joseph Jerome will get a marker with his name, dates and a remembrance of his service. 

And all this from the kindness of a city employee.

UPDATE: The city of Shrewsbury got together with the folks who memorialize the war veterans and ordered a marker. It arrived just in time for Memorial Day. So now he is remembered. So pleased.

A happy ending.

New Discoveries

You may remember that I blogged about this story in 2014. To my mind it was a lesson about not taking the family legends too seriously. A story had made its way through the family about a child born out of wedlock. One of those skeletons in the family closet. But it wasn't at all. Henry James "Harry" Tapply had an early marriage to Gertrude Haskins. He then went off to World War I. Gertrude had the baby and died five weeks later. The death cert. we finally located said "anemia and nephritis", but I felt there had to be more to the story.

Lately, I've been trolling the pages of Chronicling America (a free site) and newspapers.com for family obituaries. And sure enough, I found this short obituary for Gertrude. The interesting part to me was "after an illness of five weeks" and "leaves an infant daughter five weeks old". This means that Gertrude's death WAS a result of some trauma around the birth of baby Amy Eunice. (who became June Walley after her adoption by Bess Tapply and Sam Walley)

I've made a few other discoveries too. There was a nice obituary covering the life and career of Richard "Wink" Tapply and his wife Ruth. He went to art school at the Copley School in Boston. He also was loved and admired for his work in recreation services in New Hampshire.

There was another interesting obit for Kathleen Gabel, Donaldson Tapply's daughter. She served in the Navy, worked as a paralegal, managed a restaurant. And this is a whole branch of the family I knew nothing about.

I really enjoyed reading the obit for Sharon Tapply Foster, Philip's daughter and Kevin's sister. She was apparently a bit of a horse whisperer. She rode and trained horses after her retirement. I wish we had gotten to know one another.

Then there is the remembrance that was in the Globe for William G Tapply. He came from the Thomas J Tapply branch of the family. (Charles's older brother) You may have read one of his mystery books from the Brady Coyne series. They are some of my favorites. I still wonder why the branches of the original Tapply family didn't stay in touch. We have so many Tapply cousins out there.

On the English side there is the obit for another Richard Tapply. This Richard lived in Kent, England, where the Tapplys hale from. He spent 54 years running the Wateringbury Brewery. He got quite a remembrance in the Kent and Sussex Courier.

On the other side of my family, an obit dated 1917 put to rest a long mystery and "brick wall" in my research on my father's family. My grandfather's sister Honora or "Nora" Fitzgerald died at only 43. She was a question mark on my tree for a long time. It appears she had heart

trouble.

Another question mark was the exact death date for Lotta Smith from the Rogers side of my family. A friendly person with access to Newsbank helped me find her obit in the 1966 Worcester Telegram. With a little math I was able to get the date from the article and read a nice review of her career as a singer and soloist. 

The other benefit of searching the newspaper archives is that if you do an open search, you get the occasional family story.

This is a Christmas story from 1947 in the  Rochester, New York paper featuring Deborah Levin and her mother Helen Tapply Flaherty Levin. Helen was Roberta's sister and Nell Tapply's daughter.

This story is from the 1939 Fitchburg Sentinel. Apparently Roberta Flaherty (Also Nell's daughter) was working there as a clerk. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Roberta herself had a hand in composing the article. She was very witty and quite the writer in high school. A cute article.

If you are looking for good or interesting family stories, old newspaper article are the ticket.

Some require a subscription, but others are available through your public library.  Certainly, it's worth giving it a try.

School Days

Edgerly School Second Grade- 1931

My mom came from a mid-sized factory town in central Massachusetts. Fitchburg was almost past its best days even when she was a girl. But a university was established there: Fitchburg Normal School, later Fitchburg Teachers College and now Fitchburg State College. The schools around the university became "lab" schools for the trainees. This is where my mom and her cousins went to school in the lower grades.

From my mom's house on Garfield Street it wouldn't have been a terrible walk, but very cold and treacherous in the winter. My mom recalls wearing layers of clothes against the cold winds whipping down North Street.  Brrr...

The second grade picture above shows my mom- second row far right grinning at the camera. That might be her friend Pauline Morency (Punky) right next to her. On the first row with the very straight bangs and shiny dark hair is Jane Tapply. We think the little girl with the white collar to Jane's left would be Ferne Tapply. The three cousins were in school together all 12 grades.

Edgerly School Grade 6- abt 1935

Here's some of the same group again in 6th grade. This time, my mom is the one at the end of the arrow. Second row, second from right. I can't be sure, but I think Jane is right in front of her. Jane was always very dark-haired and petite. We believe Ferne is to the far left on the front row with her hands clasped.

School is back in session. It's picture day this month in a lot of schools. It made me dig out these pictures and take another look.

Women Who Paved the Way

Cora Elizabeth

This is Cora Elizabeth Rogers, née Smith. She was my great-grandmother. I am reminded of how the women in our past still shape our lives. By the 1920's she would be married to my great-grandfather Edward. Her son Harry and daughter Dorothy are adults. She was to be a force in my mother's life. In my mother's young life, Edward and Cora lived right next door to my grandparents on Garfield St.. But in the 1920's they lived on Charles St..

146 Charles St.

Edward is listed at the Superintendent of the City Sewer Dept. in the 1920 census. He would rise to become Superintendent of Streets. 

I was browsing the newspaper archives for the Fitchburg Sentinel and I found this story. It is the registration roll for the 1922 elections. The vote for women had been ratified in August of 1920. Interestingly, there are no Tapply women on the list. But there is my great-grandmother.

Voting was important enough to Cora for her to be on the first list of voters in Fitchburg. She is an example to us all.

Then and Now

 This is the famous Quincy Market in Boston. On the left in 1904 and a current photo from Mr. Google. Long ago the street was closed off and made a walking street, but I remember going inside as a child and seeing whole sides of beef, fresh fish and vegetables for sale.

A butcher at Quincy-Boston Public Library

According to Boston Magazine, in 1823 Josiah Quincy, then mayor, didn't like the view from his office. He hired an architect, and the Greek Revival temple of food was born.  It opened in 1826.

A parade through Quincy Market- 1876

It became a center of interest in the city, as this parade picture show. And here is the earliest image I was able to find. A lantern slide from some time before 1868. Mostly what you see here is Faneuil Hall. (The correct name for the whole area is Faneuil Hall Marketplace)

Does this have any direct connection to my family? No. But this was a favorite spot to go as a child, even before it became the land of  Urban Outfitters, Coach and Starbucks. I guess I wasn't the only one. This made me laugh and it's appropriate to the season.

A lady picking out her Thanksgiving turkey- 1952

Family Correspondence and a Lesson in "Telephone"

 

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.

James Henry's birth

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:

• 

  A partial Tapply tree

  Do your research carefully from the bottom up always looking for birth, marriage and death records to support your conclusions.
• 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.