Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Spence kids baptisms

Found the baptism of two [known] Spence children at familysearch.org today.  Using the batch number of the records, I checked to see if there were any more children listed by the same parents [John Spence and wife Teresa shown as "Tracy"]: none found.  Meandered over to ancestry.com and found the baptism record for another Spence child, one I'd previously found in historic newspapers unnamed as an infant who died young.  Ancestry however had the child's name [William Henry Spence] and referred to the same batch number as the first two!  I tried various searches but was unable to locate the record in that batch. 

The two daughters whose baptism records I found are assumed to have been twins, as their ages were the same in the 1850 census.  The baptism records show they were baptised on the same date at 4 or 5 years of age [May 1830].  Elizabeth Jane Spence still lived at home at 1850; her [supposed] twin Mary Catharine was listed last in the household, which I took to mean she had lived at home within the census reporting period but was no longer there.  Have not found a marriage or death record for her yet.

William Henry Spence died July 1833, age 3 months.  He was baptised June 1833, perhaps because he was not expected to live very long.

There was one [known] older son and perhaps two more unknown Spence children that would fit in the family structure. 

These Maryland families are tough to locate!