♂Hans Spony

Hans Spony, called the elder, was a villager of the parish of Bamlach, on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, whose three children with his wife Anna Schmidler were baptized there in the last years of the Thirty Years’ War^W. He was possibly the seventh great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Joannes Spony (died 1726).

Family

Their son Joannes was born at Rheinweiler and baptized on 28 October 1641, the feast of Saints Simon and Jude. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms were entered in the Bamlach church book. Dorothea followed on Palm Sunday 1645 and Marcus on 25 January 1648. Dorothea married twice and was buried at Bamlach on 21 February 1720. Joannes may have been the man of that name who married Jacobe Haug of Großkembs in 1666 and died at Rheinweiler in 1726, an aged widower.

Notes

The records

The village family book^W of Bamlach and Rheinweiler, a compiled reconstitution of the two villages’ families from the parish registers of 1630 to 1810 (online at online-ofb.de/bamlach), enters him as Hans Sponi “senior”, with no dates and no parents, married to Anna Schmidler, and lists exactly three children: Joannes in 1641, Dorothea (1645–1720) and Marcus in 1648. FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds the three baptisms, the father written Hans Spon, and no fourth child of the couple. It has no marriage of Hans and Anna; the registers begin about 1630, and their marriage may have taken place before that or in another parish. His own birth and death are not recorded in either.

Another couple of the parish, Joannes Spon and Anna Baumän, had children baptized in the same years, Caspar in 1640 and Ursula and Bartholomaeus in 1643. They were a separate household.

“The elder”

The word “senior” sets him apart from a second Hans Sponi in the family book, “der Jüngere” (the younger), a boatman who died in 1652, the husband of Maria Emminger. Two living namesakes called elder and younger were often father and son, but the family book joins nothing between them. The oldest Sponi in the book, a Joannes who died in 1659 at about eighty, could be Hans the elder himself or his father; the records do not decide it.

Dorothea’s baptism

The family book gives her baptism “uff Palmarum”, on Palm Sunday, and dates it 30 March 1645. The day is not settled, and only the feast and the year are given here.

The link to Joannes Spony

The family book keeps the Joannes baptized in 1641 apart from the Joannes Sponi of Rheinweiler who married Jacobe Haug in 1666 and died in 1726; its compilers did not join them. The 1641 child is the only Joannes in FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book between 1630 and 1650 apart from a Joannes Georgius (died 1671), born in 1643 to Hans Sponi the younger and Maria Emminger. A boy baptized in 1641 would have been about twenty-four at the marriage in 1666 and about eighty-four in 1726, which fits the family book’s “bejahrter Witwer”, aged widower. Against the match, the family book also holds the burial of a “Joan. Sponi” in February 1675, with no age and no wife named, who could be the child of 1641. An age at either burial would settle it, and the index records none. A family tree on FamilySearch joins the 1641 child to the husband of Jacobe Haug; the link is given here as possible only.