♂Josephus Spony

Josephus Spony (living in 1754) was a villager of the parish of Bamlach, on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Elisabetha Reymann in 1744 and was the father of four children baptized at Bamlach in the next ten years. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Gertrud Spony (1751–1812).

Marriage and family

Nothing is known of Josephus’s parents or the year of his birth, and the records differ on his village: the village family book^W of Bamlach and Rheinweiler gives his birth at Rheinweiler, the index of his marriage at Bamlach. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book.

Josephus Spony and Elisabetha Reymann married in 1744 at Rheinweiler, by the village family book of the two places; the index of the Bamlach register gives the wedding in February 1744 at Bamlach. Josephus is said to have been a widower already, and his first wife is not known. Their first child, Joannes, was baptized at Bamlach on 13 December 1744, ten months after the wedding, and Anna Maria, Gertrud and Jacobus followed between 1749 and 1754. Elisabetha is said to have died at Rheinweiler in 1763, when the youngest child, Jacobus, was about nine. When and where Josephus himself died is not known.

Notes

His identity

The village family book 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 enters him as Josephus Sponi, born at Rheinweiler, with no birth year, no parents and only the one marriage, to Elisabetha in 1744. It marks him “vid.”, its abbreviation for a man who was a widower at the marriage it lists, and names no first wife. The book holds several other men named Josephus Sponi in these years and does not identify him with any of them. The family book and the index write the surname Sponi; the spelling Spony is used here.

The marriage

The family book gives the marriage as 1744 at Rheinweiler, and this page keeps that year and place. A FamilySearch index of the Bamlach register, in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929, gives it in February 1744 at Bamlach, with the groom written Josephus Sponi, born at Bamlach, and the bride Elisabetha Reyman, born at Rheinweiler. The index marks the groom single, but the collection enters every Sponi groom as single, including men the family book records as widowers, so the word is a default and does not contradict the family book.

The children

The family book gives the children as Joannes (1744–1807), Anna Maria (1749), Gertrud (1751–1812) and Jacobus (1754–1770), who drowned as a youth. FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds these four baptisms and no other child of the couple: Joannes on 13 December 1744, Anna Maria on 4 January 1749, Gertrud on 28 March 1751, written Gertrudis Syiny, and Jacobus on 23 July 1754, written Sponis. The index entry for Anna Maria gives her the surname Dossenbach, with a mother written Elisabetha Reymän, while an adjacent entry of the same day, for an Anna Maria Sponi, names Josephus Sponi with a mother written Mar Eva Kab; the mothers of the two entries appear to have been crossed in the index.

Elisabetha’s death

The family book gives Elisabetha’s death at Rheinweiler in 1763; it is the only source for that year.