♀Jakobea Spony

Jakobea Spony (born about 1766) is known mainly through her daughter. Church-book indexes survive for her own marriage and for the baptism of a daughter, and little else is known of her life. She was the third great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Magdalena Zähringer (born about 1790).

Marriage and family

The index of her marriage to Christian Zehringer at Bamlach, in Baden, on 27 November 1786 gives her birth as 1766 at Rheinweiler, so she was probably born there that year. A FamilySearch index of baptisms gives the baptism of a Jacobea Sponi on 16 August 1766, a daughter of Johann Jakob Spony and Maria Anna Reymann, which is probably hers.

On 22 January 1810 Magdalena Zähringer, aged 19 and born at Rheinweiler, married Aloys Basler, aged 23, also of Rheinweiler, at Bamlach, then in the Grand Duchy of Baden^W. The only record of that marriage known is two FamilySearch indexes, which name her parents as Christian Zehringer and Jakobea Spony, the mother written “Jakobina” in the second. An index entry for the baptism of a Magdalena on 11 June 1790, daughter of Christian Zehinger and Jacobea Schany, is most likely hers, since her age at the marriage fits, though that index does not name the parish. Her parents were probably Johann Jakob Spony and Maria Anna Reymann.

The village family book of Bamlach-Rheinweiler gives her death as 1819, at Rheinweiler, the village of her birth. Quoting the register of her 1786 wedding, the same book calls her the legitimate daughter of the late Johann Jakob Spony, a citizen and woodcutter, so her father had died three years before she married.

Notes

Her birth and marriage

The 1786 marriage is known from a FamilySearch index of German marriage records, which gives her birth as 1766 at Rheinweiler. The village family book of Bamlach-Rheinweiler gives the same year and place, and it counts her among the children of the second marriage; the baptism index described below is a probable match only.

Her baptism and parents

A FamilySearch index gives the baptism of a Jacobea Sponi on 16 August 1766, a daughter of Joannes Jacobus Sponi and Maria Anna Reymänn. The index spells the parents as above; they are named here as Johann Jakob Spony and Maria Anna Reymann. The village family book, which lists her among the children of the second marriage, gives the same parents and the year 1766, and a sister, Maria Anna, baptized to the same parents on 12 April 1764, is named in an index as well. No copy of the entry itself is known, so the match is probable, not proved.

Her father

The village family book gives her father, Johann Jakob Spony (whom the book spells Joannes Jacobus Sponi), as born 1716 and died 1783. He was the son of the village Vogt (headman) Joannes Jacobus Spony and Anastasia Carlin. The book calls him a widower when he married Maria Anna Reymann in 1763. A FamilySearch index of that marriage names him single, but that collection enters every Sponi groom as single, so the word is a default, not a statement about his status. The 1786 wedding register, as the book quotes it, gives the family’s house as number 33.

By his first marriage, to Ursula Zink (1718–1763), he had four daughters: Anna Maria (1747), Agatha (1752), Catharina (1754) and Kunigunda (1758). Jakobea therefore had four half-sisters.