​Wicocomico Indian

Taptico/Tapp, Pinn and Nickens
A Genealogy Site In Progress

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In my opinion, one of the greatest dangers facing modern genealogy isn't the destruction of records, burned courthouses, or missing census pages. It is the quiet spread of unsourced information across the internet.  A single guess entered into an online family tree can appear in hundreds or even thousands of other trees. Future researchers encounter the same information over and over, assume that so many people cannot possibly be wrong, and copy it into their own work. Or they find a book written maybe in 1945 which goes into great detail about a particular family -- but that was according to information available to researchers 81 years ago! Unfortunately, this erroneous information becomes accepted as fact, especially when it is embraced by those researchers who purport to be "experts." I suspect part of this is due to laziness and part due to some wanting to gather as many people into their tree as possible, especially if it leads to historical figures, celebrities, royalty or Native American heritage. 

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For instance someone writes that "Vincent Tapp married Elizabeth Bourn" without citing a source. But it makes sense, right? After all, Vincent's brother William married Christian Bourn, it makes sense that two brothers married two sisters. Another researcher copies it. A third author, not a genealogist, includes it in a county history. An online tree cites the county history as proof, even though the history itself was based on the original unsourced claim. And this doesn’t even take into account how quickly bad information can spread through social media and online groups. Before long, the statement appears to have multiple independent sources when, in reality, every version traces back to the same unsupported assumption. This is particularly true when the bad information gets brought into mainstream through so-called genealogy professionals.

 

The goal of true genealogy is not to build the largest tree or to collect the most ancestors. The goal is to reconstruct the lives of real people using the best evidence available, while clearly distinguishing between what is documented, what is probable, and what is merely possible. When we fail to make those distinctions, we are not preserving history—we are creating folklore.

 

A couple of things in particular in relation to our Tapp line have popped up recently in various places and have very recently been included in videos and writings which have not been properly sourced and are based on nothing more than guesses.

 

The first involves Vincent Tapp, son of William Taptico and Elizabeth. Vincent has  been difficult to track.  Roughly, his date of birth should have been around or before 1710 and he died in 1752. Even though his probate records clearly show that his wife, Jane, declined to administer his estate and it was instead administered by his brother, William, unsupported information is now circulating that he married Elizabeth Bourn, sister to his brother William’s wife, Christian. Although there’s every possibility that Jane could have been his second wife, there has never been any sourcing whatsoever to support this. It is now circulating throughout trees in Family Search. I have asked professionals who have used this information for their sourcing but so far have been given nothing but excuses.

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I'm not saying Vincent Tapp did not marry Elizabeth Bourn; rather there is no credible sourcing or documentation proving this. If the females of the Tapp line cannot be proven to the best of ability, how is it possible to tell the different generational William Tapp apart? [See https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/understanding-the-genealogical-proof-standard for a good explanation of genealogical standard of proof.​]

 

Another thing that I take issue with is the recent acceptance by professional and amateur genealogists accepting the long asserted and unproven claims that the maiden name of Elender, wife of William Taptico, was "Jones." Further many of these same people have accepted and spread the maiden name of Elizabeth, wife of William Taptico II as "Barrick." Again these maiden names have been spread around for years without ANY documentation, much less proper documentation, but they are taking on new life with the inclusion in recent videos and writings of some high profile individuals in the Tapp genealogy universe without either proper sourcing or the reasoning behind a preponderance of the evidence. ​

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Finally, the recent "findings" regarding the English Tapps and the Native American Tapps is something I am concerned about for future research. Without getting into the specifics of the recent online Haplogroup discussions, I will say that I fear the recent rush to conclusions concerning the ethnicities of the different lines of the Tapps in Virginia will give way to much more erroneous information being copied and dispersed without proper sourcing. I’m not just saying this because my strengths lie in paper trails, but any true professional genealogist will tell you that DNA results work best if they go hand in hand with a corroborating paper trail. For instance, yDNA can prove there was an NPE in a line, but it can’t tell you where the NPE occurred. For that, you need research, research. Look for patterns in migrating families, land ownership, formal document witnessing, court records and the like.

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Genealogy is more than collecting names and dates; it is the careful reconstruction of real lives from the fragments they left behind. Our responsibility is not to create the largest tree, but the most accurate one possible. By demanding evidence, citing our sources, and resisting the urge to repeat unproven stories, we ensure that the history we pass on to the next generation is something more valuable than folklore—it is the closest truth that the records allow us to discover.

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I'd like to leave you with this thought: always follow a claim back to the earliest surviving record, not merely to the earliest published tree.

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