In the earlier years it was not surprising to hear of a serious wound or even a death in a family. However, when terror strikes five members of the same family it is definitely a matter that draws attention and causes suspicion of a family curse. For the Tapps this was the case when tragedy struck four men and one woman in the family, all at different times and in different situations.

It all began with Edward Tapps, believed to be brother to George, Earl and Garnet. He was working for the logging camps when struck in the back with a large hammer. He was immediately given proper care, but in the end lost some use in both of his legs, leaving him disabled for the rest of his life.

It was after this time that George Tapps began to run the sawmill for Ed. At that time the sawmill was over near the creek in Kynoch. George was sawing wood one day when he made the fatal mistake of bending too near to the saw. He reach down to grab a slab of wood or to remove the edges from the saw, when he got much too close and cut the back of his head off on the blade, ending his life in an extremely brutal way.

Sometime before George's fatal accident, in 1929 to be exact, he and his brother Earl were out in the fields haying. Whenever they came across a patch of ox-eyed daisies, which are terrible for farming, they had to stop the horses and pull the patch completely out of the ground to keep them from spreading. While stopping to pull out a patch of these daisies, without realizing it they disturbed a hornet nest. The hornets began to swarm the horses, spooking them and causing them to run. Now this would have been just fine if Earl had not been standing so near them, however he was and his foot was cut off in the mower knife. His mother rushed out to help him and found that his foot was barely hanging on to his leg by a thread of flesh. She stopped the bleeding by plastering it with flour, and then the doctor took over. Luckily the doctor managed to do to the best of his abilities at that time, and Earl's foot healed so well that he was later accepted into the army.

Margaret Tapp was a schoolteacher. It is not known for sure just how she was related to the four boys - she was either a sister or a cousin. The women's institute was having a meeting at the McAuley's home when word came in of her death. She had gone into the hospital for an operation and hemmhoraged afterward, resulting in her death.

The most tragic story of the Tapps family was the tale of the death of Garnet, the youngest boy. This event did not take place until after he was married. Garnet was out in the barn working on a tractor that was having problems. With this model of tractor the gas tank had to be removed in order to get at the motor, so Garnet emptied the gas into a metal bucket and set it on the battery. This was his mistake, for the battery shorted out and the sparks lit the gas in the pail on fire. Because the barn was fairly new Garnet grabbed the flaming pail and rushed out in a panic. Somewhere along the way he spilled the entire pail of flaming gas down the front of him, and began to run around the yard in an inferno. His wife rushed out of the house with a blanket trying to wrap it around him to smother the flames but Garnet, in desperate panic, could not be caught. When he finally slowed down it was too late. He died that evening.