♂Joannes Spony

Joannes Spony (died January 1726) was a villager of Rheinweiler, on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Jacobe Haug of Großkembs, across the Rhine in Alsace, in 1666 and had nine children with her over the next twenty-two years. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Joannes Jacobus Spony (1682–1755).

Early life

Joannes may have been the child of that name baptized at Bamlach on 28 October 1641, the feast of Saints Simon and Jude, a son of Hans Spony and Anna Schmidler. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book.

Marriage and family

Joannes Spony and Jacobe Haug married at Bamlach in 1666. Their first child, Joannes Jacobus, was baptized at Bamlach on 6 January 1669, and eight more followed by 1688: Philippus, Josephus, two children whose names are not recorded, born in 1674 and 1675, Anna Maria, a second Joannes Jacobus in 1682, Jacobea and Elisabeth. The first Joannes Jacobus died before 1682, and his name was given again to the younger brother. Philippus died in 1716, before both his parents.

Later life

Jacobe died at Rheinweiler in January 1723 and was buried at Bamlach on the 7th, after more than fifty-six years of marriage. Joannes survived her by three years. He died at Rheinweiler in January 1726, by then an aged widower, and was buried at Bamlach on 29 January.

Notes

His baptism and parents

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. Those registers begin in 1640, with a few entries reaching back to 1636, according to Karl Seith’s 1940 study of the Swiss who settled in Bamlach, Rheinweiler and Bellingen after the Thirty Years’ War (Das Markgräflerland 11, pp. 61–68), which lists the Sponi among the families already living at Rheinweiler about 1640. The family book gives years rather than full dates for most entries. It enters him as Joannes Sponi “in Rheinweiler”, with no birth year and no parents. In a separate entry it gives a Joannes Sponi born at Rheinweiler on 28 October 1641 (“uff Simonis et Juda”), a son of Hans Sponi the elder and Anna Schmidler, with a sister Dorothea and a brother Marcus, but it does not join that child to the husband of Jacobe Haug.

FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds the 1641 baptism, of a child written Joannes Spon, son of Hans Spon and Anna Schmidler. It is the only baptism of a Joannes Spony in that index between 1630 and 1650 apart from a Joannes Georgius, born in 1643 to other parents, who died in 1671. 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 “aged widower”, though the phrase would fit any man born between about 1630 and 1650. 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. He is not the couple’s own child of 1675, whom the family book enters as a birth, with no death. A family tree on FamilySearch joins the 1641 child to this man; the parentage is given here as possible only.

The marriage

The family book gives the marriage as 1666. Two FamilySearch indexes of the Bamlach register agree on the year but not on the day: the Freiburg Catholic Church Records index writes the couple Joes Spon and Jacobea Haugis and gives 9 May 1666, and the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929 writes them Joes Sponi and Jacobe Haug and gives 5 September 1666. Both put Bamlach in the bride’s and groom’s birthplace, which may only repeat the place of the marriage, and neither names their parents. Only the year is used here, and for Jacobe’s origin the family book’s Großkembs.

The children

The family book lists nine children: Joannes Jacobus in 1669, who died before 1682, Philippus (1670–1716), Josephus (1672–1742), two children whose names it does not give, born in 1674 and 1675, Anna Maria (1677), Joannes Jacobus (1682–1755), Jacobea (1685–1750) and Elisabeth (1688). FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds the baptisms of eight of them: Joannes Jacobus on 6 January 1669, Philippus on 7 May 1670, Josephus on 25 February 1672, an unnamed child on 1 January 1674, Anna Maria on 13 April 1677, Joannes Jacobus on 31 May 1682, Jacobea on 9 August 1685, with the surname written Schoni, and Elisabeth on 14 July 1688. It has no entry for the child of 1675. In the entries of 1669, 1670 and 1674 the mother is written Barb, Robe or Barbara Hug, and in others Jacobea or Jacobe. Across one unbroken run of children after the 1666 marriage this is most likely a misreading of an abbreviated name rather than a second wife, and the family book has the one couple.

The burials

The burials are known from FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book: Jacobea Hug on 7 January 1723 and Joannes Sponi on 29 January 1726, in the years the family book gives for their deaths at Rheinweiler. The index entries give no ages. The family book calls him “bejahrter Witwer”, an aged widower, at his burial. The register pages themselves are not cited here. The family book and the indexes write the surname Sponi or Spon; the spelling Spony is used here.