23 October 2021

18.1 5xgreat grandfather Thomas Sporne (1770-1827): Norfolk Carrier

My 4xgreat grandmother was Margaret Sporne. She married Aaron Wales on 8 January 1818 in Burnham Sutton, Norfolk. Her baptism record, with image, is available at Ancestry; she was born and baptised (privately) on the same day – 21st May 1799 at Burnham Westgate, Norfolk, daughter of Thomas Sporne and Mary his wife, late Beck (see second line below):




Her parents had married three years earlier, after banns, at Burnham Norton, on 8 January 1796. Both are shown as single on the parish register entry:

The witnesses appear to be two women, Susanna Pal?ver and Ann A?. Bride and groom make their marks.




Their first son, Thomas, named after his father, was baptised in December of the same year. Margaret Sporne appears to have been their second child, born nearly three years later. They baptised at least eight children in all at Burnham Westgate between 1796 and 1816. Only one, William, born in 1804, died in infancy (aged 9 months, in 1805).

Only the two youngest children’s baptisms give an indication of their father’s occupation: in January 1815, when daughter Susan Sporne was baptised, her father is a Livery Servant. Their youngest son William (named after his brother who died some ten years earlier) was baptised on 15 December 1816; at that time, his father Thomas Sporne is shown as ‘Carrier’. 

On 14 November 1827, Thomas Sporne, ‘married man’ was buried, aged 59, at Burnham Sutton. Administration of his estate was granted to his son Thomas Sporne, Farmer of Wormegay, Norfolk, in 1828. A copy is held at Norfolk Record Office, which I hope to be able to access.

If 59 years old in 1827, he would have been born around 1768. There is a baptism for a Thomas Sporne, son of William Sporne and his wife Anne, at Stanhoe, Norfolk, on 5 May 1769, but this child was buried four days later, on 9 May 1769. The following year, on 13 May 1770, another Thomas Sporne, son of William Sporne and his wife Anne, was also baptised at Stanhoe, and this child appears to have survived and grown up to be my 5xgreat grandfather.

Stanhoe with Barwick is about four miles from the Burnhams where Thomas Sporne married Mary Beck in 1796, both in the Docking district of Norfolk.

Little else would be known about Thomas Sporne apart from his occupation on two of his youngest children’s baptisms, and had his widow not survived him by over 30 years. When she died in 1860, she is described on her death certificate as ‘Widow of Thomas Sporne’, Carrier from Burnham to Norwich and Lynn’.

For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view

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This blog will (eventually) show the ancestry of each of my four grandparents. I've started with my paternal grandfather, James Aaron St...