♂William Spooner

William Spooner (died March 1683/84) was a settler of Plymouth and later of Dartmouth, in Plymouth Colony^W, whose will names his daughter Sarah Sherman and her husband John Sherman. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Sarah Spooner (1653–1720).

Early years at Plymouth

His parents are not known. An online family tree, reading a 1637 indenture in the printed Plymouth Colony Records, calls him “of Colchester in the County of Essex”, in England; that reading rests on that source alone. A Spooner family history published in 1869 made him a son of John Spooner and Anne Peck of Leiden, but no record supports that link.

The Great Migration Begins, a compiled study of the colony’s first settlers, quotes the colony records on his early years. On 1 July 1637 John Coombs of Plymouth took over from John Holmes the remaining time of his servant, William Spooner. On 15 October 1646 Spooner came before the governor and undertook to keep and provide for a child that Mrs. Coombs had left with him when she went to England, promising that the town would bear no charge for it. On 1 August 1648 the court ordered that the children of Mrs. Combe, then living with him, should stay with him and not be placed elsewhere without the court’s order. The records do not say why she left the children with him.

Marriage and family

The Plymouth register records the death on 28 April 1648 of Elizabeth Spooner, wife of William Spooner, an earlier wife. William Spooner married Hannah Pratt at Plymouth on 18 March 1651/52^W. The Plymouth register records the births of two of their children: Sarah, daughter of William Spooner, on 5 October 1653, and Samuel, son of William Spooner, on 14 January 1655/56. Sarah later married John Sherman (1644–1734) of Dartmouth.

Death and will

He made his will on 8 March 1683/84, “being aged & weak of body”, and signed it with his mark. He had died by 14 March, when the inventory of the estate “of William Spooner of the Towne of Dartmouth late deceased” was taken; it came to £201 15s. The will leaves his great coat to his son-in-law John Sherman and a cow each to his daughters Sarah Sherman, Martha Whing and Hannah. It also names a younger daughter, Mercy, who was not yet 21, and the sons Isaac, John, Ebenezer and William, with his son Samuel as executor. This will, together with the register’s record of Sarah’s birth, identifies Sarah Spooner, the wife of John Sherman, as his daughter.