Thomas Sporne, my 5xgreat grandfather, was baptised on 13 May 1770, at Stanhoe with Barwick, Norfolk, son of William & Ann Sporne.
Stanhoe with Barwick is about four miles from Burnham
Westgate, where he married Mary Beck of Burnham Overy in 1796, and ran a
business as ‘Carrier from Burnham to Norwich and Lynn’, according to his
widow’s death certificate.
William Sporne married Anne Greaves after banns
on 20 January 1766 at Stanhoe with Barwick. Both were single; William Sporne
was of the Parish of Docking, his bride from Stanhoe. Neither could sign their
names. Their witnesses were John Belting? and James Kendall. The latter was
witness to several other marriages recorded in the Register in the previous and
subsequent years, so was probably a parish clerk or similar officer. Rather
than make a X as his mark, he ‘signs’ with the letter K. William Sporne's own mark appears to be a W.
FindMyPast has a Boyd’s marriage index entry for the
‘banns only’ for the same marriage which shows William Sporne as from
Southmere, Norfolk, rather than Docking, although according to Norfolk
Heritage, the village of Southmere had ceased to exist by the late middle ages.
British History Online has it located two miles from Docking, but
subsumed within that parish.
Unfortunately, there are no other records relating to William
Sporne so far found online, apart from being named as father of the eleven
children he and wife Anne Greaves baptised at Docking between 1767 and
1787, and his burial – as Willm Sporn, married man, aged 83 years, on 26
January 1817. So we do not know his occupation – was he a ‘Carrier’ like his
son and grandsons?
If his age at burial is correct, he was born around 1734.
Unfortunately I have not been able to find a likely baptism record for him
anywhere in Norfolk within 10 years of 1730, even with multiple name variations
(Spoorne, Sporen, Spoarn, Spurn, Spurne, Spoarne etc). So another brick wall.
His wife Anne Greaves made a similarly scant mark on
the records but there is, at least, what looks like a baptism for her at
Stanhoe with Barwick on 29 September 1742. Helpfully, the entry in the parish
register shows that she was born on 22 September that year, daughter of Richard
and Margaret Greaves:
She would therefore have been about 23 years old when she
married William Sporne. There is a burial record for an Ann Sporne,
widow, aged 83, at Docking on 22 February 1820. This may not be the same
person, as she would have been 77. However, the person informing the vicar of
her age may not have known it exactly.
A search for her parents’ marriage finds only one likely one
online: Richard Greaves married Margaret Clarke at Syderstone,
Norfolk, on 13 October 1741, just over a year before she was born. They were
married by banns, and were both single. Syderstone is about four miles from
Stanhoe with Barwick, where Anne Greaves was baptised.
It’s likely that Margaret Clarke’s family were from
Syderstone, and Richard Greaves was from Stanhoe, where they brought up
their family.
Another descendent of the Spornes was in touch and suggested
that Margaret Clarke died the same year that daughter Anne Greaves
was born. However, Richard Greaves and his wife Margaret
continued to baptise children at Stanhoe with Barwick through the 1740s and
1750s, and I have not found a likely burial for Margaret Greaves in
1742. One of the couple’s sons was Francis Greaves, born in 1745; it seems that
when William Sporne witnessed the wedding of Francis Greaves and Sara
Nortley the year after his own marriage, the groom was his brother-in-law.
My 6xgreat grandparents William Sporne and Anne
Greaves baptised eleven children at Docking in Norfolk between 1767-1787,
so my 5xgreat grandfather Thomas Sporne had at least ten siblings. He
was 17 when his youngest sister, Martha, was born and, sadly, buried, in 1787.
Of his other brothers and sisters, at least three others besides Martha died in
their first few months of life.
Mary Beck married Thomas Sporne in 1796 and they went on to have eight children, including my 4xgreat grandmother Margaret Sporne. If the baptism I found for her is correct, Mary Beck was born in Burnham Overy in 1774, the illegitimate daughter of another Mary Beck. There do not appear to be any surviving bastardy bonds indexed online to indicate what happened to Mary Beck senior, and I have not found any firm evidence for her baptism or subsequent marriage or burial. So another brick wall.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
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