♂Johann Jakob Spony

Johann Jakob Spony (1716–1783) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, and married twice. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Jakobea Spony (born 1766).

Marriage and family

Johann Jakob was the son of Joannes Jacobus Spony (1682–1755), the village headman (Vogt), and Anastasia Carlin (1684–1758). The parentage rests on two sources: the village family book of Bamlach-Rheinweiler (2006), which gives years rather than days, and the index of the Bamlach register, which probably records his own baptism there on 28 January 1716 with the same parents. The same index lists the other four children of the couple, two older sisters, Anna Maria and Catharina, and two younger brothers, Franciscus Xaverius and Josephus, all baptized at Bamlach between 1711 and 1719.

In 1747 he married Ursula Zink (1718–1763) at Rheinweiler, and they had four daughters: Anna Maria (1747), Agatha (1752), Catharina (1754) and Kunigunda (1758). Ursula died in 1763.

On 26 June 1763 he married Maria Anna Reymann (1724–1799) at Bamlach. The family book calls him a widower at that wedding. The marriage index names him single, but that collection enters every Sponi groom as single, so the word is a default, not a statement about his status. Both bride and groom were born at Rheinweiler. Their first daughter, Maria Anna, was baptized at Bamlach on 12 April 1764, ten months after the wedding, and a second, Jakobea, followed on 16 August 1766.

He died at Rheinweiler in 1783. At Jakobea’s marriage in 1786 the entry described him as deceased, a citizen and woodcutter.

Notes

His baptism

The FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book gives the baptism, on 28 January 1716, of a child written Joan Jacobus Spon, with the parents written Jacobus Spon and Anastasia Carl. The index is the source for this baptism; the register page itself is not cited here. The parents it gives are the same as the family book’s. The same index holds the baptisms of the other four children of the couple, from 1711 to 1719, each with the same parents.

The family book

Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf, Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 (Basel: Edition Gesowip, 2006), is a compiled village family book built from the parish registers and published online at online-ofb.de/bamlach. It gives years, not days, for most entries. Its entries for him, his parents, both wives and the daughters are the basis for the family above. Because it is a compiled reconstruction rather than an original record, its dates are graded as compiled.

The 1763 marriage

The marriage of 26 June 1763 appears in the family book, which calls the groom a widower and writes the bride’s name Reimann, and in the index of the Bamlach register, which names the groom as single and writes the bride’s name Reymänn. The spelling Reymann is used here. The collection marks the groom single on every Sponi marriage it holds, including a 1744 marriage of a groom whom the family book records as a widower, so the index’s entry for 1763 is a default and does not contradict the family book.