Posts Tagged ‘family tree’
Building a Family Tree
This year, I spent the months of August, September and October tracing the roots of my great-great-great-grandfather, William Spavold, and the origins of the Spavold family. I have used the services of Ancestry.ca in my search and thank the website and others who have studied the Spavold family before me.
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I began with these bits of information:
- William Spavold was born in Nottinghamshire in 1785 and died in 1815;
- William married Eliza Greenfield in 1807;
- William was a carpenter;
- after William died, Eliza married John Adam Hill in 1816.
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In my search, I soon encountered Spavolds in Nottinghamshire— many Spavolds. My tree, not yet available to the public, includes over 700 people, including spouses and some parents of spouses.
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The earliest records are of three Spavold males: Anthony Spavalde (1500), an ‘Unknown Spavalde’ (1493-1552) (first name unknown), and a ‘Mr. Spavan,’ (given name also unknown). All three lived in the area of Gainsborough, in northern Lincolnshire, and may have been brothers or cousins. At the same time, there is also a family with the last name of Spafford living in the Collingham area, about 30 kms south of Gainsborough. The names Spavalde, Spavan and Spafford are so similar, I think the families were related to one another.
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Anthony Spavalde married Alice and had a son Anthony, beginning at least seven generations of Spavolds. The Unknown Spavold married Maud of Gainsborough and had 3 sons and 1 daughter, beginning at least fourteen generations into the 1900s. Mr. Spavan had three sons and I have not yet been able to follow them into more generations. The Spafford family stayed in the Collingham area until the mid 1700s when some of the family had moved to Beckingham, near Gainsborough in northern Nottinghamshire; they also have more than fourteen generations into the 1900s.
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The variable spelling of the name may have something to do with the difficulties tracing these families, but Ancestry.ca seems to be able to find records in spite of the various name spellings. ‘Spavold’ is an unusual name and has been listed in the various records as ‘Spaffield,’ ‘Spavin,’ ‘Spavald,’ ‘Spaviald,’ and so on. The ways of writing in the records and their tendency to use Latin phrases adds to the difficulties.
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The families remained in the Gainsborough area for the first two or three generations, but by 1673 (family of Anthony) and 1583 (family of Unknown) had begun an outward migration to the nearby communities of Walkeringham and Misterton, both in Lincolnshire. By the fourth generation, with the marriage of Nicholai (1638), some of the families had shifted to the Everton area in northeastern Nottinghamshire and soon after to communities in eastern Yorkshire. The entire Spavold family, at least until the early 1800s remained in this group of communities in northern Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.
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The process of finding these Spavolds has been made more difficult due to the predominance of the given names Thomas, William, Robert, Elizabeth, Mary and Anne in the various families. I still haven’t found William, my great-great-grandfather, but in the next post I will talk about how best to sort family members with the same name.
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All my best,
Jane Tims (a. k. a. Spavold)
Puzzling Over My Last Name
When I was growing up, I often puzzled over my last name: ‘Spavold.’ No one else in the community where we lived had that name. I made up stories to answer folks who asked me about my surname: we were Polish; we were the only family in the world to ever have that name; we were Italian and the real name was ‘Spavoldini.’
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My dad was also interested in the orgins of the name, but he took a more studied approach. He found out the name of the first Spavold to arrive in Nova Scotia and wrote a book about the many Spavolds in Nova Scotia who were descendants of that first ‘Spavold’ in Canada: Spavold’s Wald, S.W. Spavold, unpublished, about 1990.
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The first Spavold in Nova Scotia was a boy of only 8 years, born in England in 1808. He arrived in a shipwreck of the Trafalgar on Briar Island on July 30, 1817. He came to Briar Island with his mother (Eliza Greenfield), his step-father (John Adam Hill) and his half-brother (Thomas Hill, a boy of two). The family survived the shipwreck and stayed in the Digby area of Nova Scotia. For more about this story, see my earlier post at https://janetims.com/2011/12/03/briar-island-rock-2-the-shipwreck/ .
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William’s father, my great, great, great grandfather, was William Spavold, born in Nottinghamshire in England in 1785. In 1807, when he was 22 years old, he married Eliza Greenfield. He was a carpenter and my Dad’s story was that when he died, Eliza sold his carpenter tools to get passage for Canada on the Trafalger with her second husband John Hill.
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No other information was available to my dad, although he did track down ‘Spavolds’ elsewhere in Canada, in Australia and in England. I talked on the telephone with Helen Spavold who lives in Clowne, Yorkshire, and she said, with a proud lilt in her voice, “There are Spavolds in our graveyard.” My dad, and my brother (who lived in Australia for a time), corresponded with Joseph Spavould, who lived in Australia.
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Now, with the help of Ancestry.com, I am determined to find out more about William Spavold of Nottinghamshire. The next few posts will talk about my discovery of the occurrence of Spavolds in England in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And in the 20th and 21st centuries—I am not alone.
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All my best,
Jane Tims (a. k. a. Spavold)
snags in the search for my ancestors
I have spent a lot of the weekend searching the genealogy records for information on the whereabouts of my great-grandfather before 1887 when he married my great-grandmother. It seems he had a common name and a simple search turns up a bewildering array of possibilities. Also, some of the facts do not seem to aid in the search. For example, I know he was born in Bethany, Missouri, but the only person in the census record with his name is about 10 years too young.
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To find my great-grandfather, I have looked at endless family trees, searched through long lists of possible relatives on http://www.Ancestry.com and looked at every person who lived in southern Wyoming and vicinity in 1880! I have come to know, quite well, at least three families associated with a person of the same name and age as my great-grandfather only to discover a fact that makes a connection with my family impossible.
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My post for today is only to appeal to you to think of your future family when you keep the records of your own life. Someday, my descendants will look for me (I hope they will be interested) and they will be frustrated by three mistakes I have made in record-keeping:
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1. they will be disappointed to learn I have not been very consistent about my name. First, in my work, I used my maiden name as well as my married name. Second, I have always been called by my second given name but government documents refer to me by my first name. Only last week, I was almost turned away for an appointment at the hospital because I forgot they might list me by my first name.
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2. they will be dismayed to see that, although I have nice, legible handwriting, I have not always been careful about filling out forms. In fact, I know I have been very sloppy on several occasions.
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3. they will cry when they find all the photos I have taken over the years. I have only identified people and dates in a small percentage of our home photos. When I look over our photos, I try to add information, but often I only scribble the first names of the people in the photos and I frequently have to guess at the date a photo was taken.
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When I look at my own assemblage of family information, I encounter these problems quite often. For example, who were the young women whose photos I have in my family history collection? My Mom thought perhaps they were friends of her grandmother at nursing school in Boston. I treasure their photos, but I will never know who they were.
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And I may never find, with any certainty, the whereabouts of my great-grandfather in 1860, 1870 and 1880.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
the unknown thousands – family history
Today, I will divert a little from my usual topics and mutter about genealogy. Along with my other projects, I try to keep learning about my family. Fortunately, I have a lots of materials to look at: family letters, post cards, diaries, well-researched family trees and so on.
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I am always surprised at how much is lost. Some of this is due to the loss of records, some is due to the overwhelming numbers of people involved in the family history of just one person. When I first became interested in family history, I thought about how many lives have contributed to make ‘me’. The numbers of ‘grandparents’ add up quickly as I go back in time.
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| Generation | Numbers of parents/‘grandparents’ |
| 1 (me) | |
| 2 (my parents) | 2 |
| 3 (my grandparents) | 4 |
| 4 (my great-grandparents) | 8 |
| 5 (great-great-grandparents) | 16 |
| 6 | 32 |
| 7 | 64 |
| 8 | 128 |
| 9 | 256 |
| 10 | 512 |
| 11 | 1024 |
| 12 | 2048 |
| 13 | 4096 |
| 14 | 8192 |
| 15 | 16384 |
| 16 | 32768 |
| 17 | 65536 |
| 18 | 131072 … and so on … |
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So, to make any one of us, it took thousands of people. I knew this before, but knowing I have 131 thousand ‘grand-parents’ in 18 generations is unsettling.
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I began by just trying to know the names of those 16 great-grandparents in the 5th generation. I have them almost figured out. Those with an * beside their name have a published family tree. Those with a ? are uncertain.
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Charles Clark (*) (farmer)
Margaret Aitcheson
James Johnson (farmer)
Mary MacIntosh
Lewis Norramon (?) (farmer)
Mary ……. (?)
Josiah Hawk (*) (shoemaker) https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/occupation-shoemaker/ )
Sara Kresge (*)
William Spavold (carpenter) (shipwrecked off Briar Island) (https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/briar-island-rock-2-the-shipwreck/ )
Phelena Warner
Robert Manzer
Eleanor Evan
George Cook
Eliza Jane Smith
George Sabean (*)
Jane Mullen
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About some, like William Spavold, I know quite a lot (thanks to the efforts of my Dad). I am also gradually assembling a history of my great-grandmother Ella Hawk (daughter of Josiah and Sara) (thanks to the efforts of my aunt). The sad thing is, all I will ever know about most of these people is a name. In spite of this, I owe them my existence.
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my drawing of William Spavold, his mother and brother after their shipwreck
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 