♂Joannes Jacobus Spony

Joannes Jacobus Spony (1682–1755) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Anastasia Carlin in 1710 and was the father of five children baptized at Bamlach between 1711 and 1719. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Johann Jakob Spony (1716–1783).

Early life

Joannes Jacobus was born at Rheinweiler in 1682 and was probably baptized at Bamlach on 31 May that year, the son of Joannes Spony (died 1726) and Jacobe Haug (died 1723). Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book. His mother came from Großkembs, now Kembs, across the Rhine in Alsace. He was the seventh of his parents’ nine children and the second to bear his name: an elder brother, Joannes Jacobus, had been baptized in 1669 and is thought to have died before 1682.

Marriage and family

Joannes Jacobus Spony and Anastasia Carlin married in 1710. Their first child, Anna Maria, was baptized at Bamlach on 14 August 1711, and Catharina, Johann Jakob, Franciscus Xaverius and Josephus followed between 1713 and 1719.

Later life

He is said to have served as Vogt, the village headman^W. His mother died in 1723 and his father, by then an aged widower, in 1726. Joannes Jacobus Spony died at Rheinweiler in November 1755, aged seventy-three, and Anastasia died there in 1758, still a widow.

Notes

Sources of the dates

The village family book^W is Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf, Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 (Basel, 2006), online at online-ofb.de/bamlach, a compiled reconstitution of the two villages’ families from the parish registers. It gives years rather than full dates for most entries. It writes his name Joannes Jacobus Sponi, gives his birth at Rheinweiler in 1682 and his death there in November 1755, and gives his occupation as Vogt, with the Latin title Praefectus. It names his parents as Joannes Sponi of Rheinweiler, who died there in 1726, an aged widower (“bejahrter Witwer”), and Jacobe Haug of Großkembs in Alsace, who died at Rheinweiler in 1723, and gives their marriage as 1666. It lists their nine children, from a first Joannes Jacobus in 1669, marked as dead before 1682, to Elisabeth in 1688. It gives his marriage to Anastasia Carlin as 1710 and marks her “vidua”, a widow, at her burial. The family book and the index write the surname Sponi or Spon; the spelling Spony is used here.

His baptism

FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book gives the baptism on 31 May 1682 of a child written Joannes Jacobus Spon, son of Joannes Spon and of a mother written Jacobea Bug. The index entries for three of his brothers and sisters write her Jacobe or Jacobea Hug, the family book’s Haug, so “Bug” is most likely a misreading of the same name. The index is the source for the day; the register page itself is not cited here. The same index holds the baptisms of eight of the nine children the family book lists, from 1669 to 1688.

The marriage and the children

The family book gives the marriage as 1710, and a FamilySearch marriage index places it in November 1710. The index of the Bamlach church book holds the baptisms of the five children the family book lists, and no other child of the couple; each entry names the parents as Jacobus Spon or Sponi and Anastasia Carl: Anna Maria on 14 August 1711, Catharina on 5 June 1713, Johann Jakob, written Joan Jacobus Spon, on 28 January 1716, Franciscus Xaverius on 10 May 1717 and Josephus on 6 February 1719.

His parents’ deaths

The burials of his parents are known from the same index: Jacobea Hug on 7 January 1723 and Joannes Sponi on 29 January 1726, in the years the family book gives for their deaths.