Spalding Family History

The Spalding family is one of the more thoroughly researched families of early colonial America. Anyone looking for information about the very first settlements, Chelmsford or Braintree Massachusetts, the Virginia or Massachusetts Bay Colony, Lord Baltimore, Sir George Yardley, etc., ad nauseum, won't find it here. The scope of this page is unforgivably myopic. Besides, it would be impossible to rehash so much history and I'd do a crappy job, anyhow. ( If you're more interested in American/Canadian Spaldings in particular, or the history of the Spalding name rather than American History 101, then try the Chelmsford Historical Society. They have a reprint of the Charles Warren Spalding 1876 'Spalding Memorial' for sale, though the price is a bit steep.)

Having said that, here go the mistakes:

The original immigrant to my particular Spalding branch was of English descent, Edward Spalding, born in England in 1596. One account of Edward claims he was orphaned at a young age, his mother Anne and father Wilfred Spalding, having died in a carriage accident on September 3, 1603. How true this is, I don't know. It is not even clear if Anne and Wilfred were indeed his actual parents. My own research stops at the American progenitor. Anne and Wilfred are mentioned merely as a curiosity and a possibility.

In any event, speculation is that Edward grew up in or near London. He migrated to James Cittye, Virginia Colony around 1619. At the age of 45, he would remarry, this time to a girl 19 years old, Rachel of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Together they would have four children.

In all the hundreds of years the Spaldings have been in the Americas, they have produced amazing people, as well as the not so amazing. Violinists, artists, preachers, teachers, writers, philanthropists, sports stars, judges, sporting goods gurus, doctors, Mormon bible writers, entrepreneurs, war heroes, cowards, drug addicts, Internet junkies and Canadians. If I have time or energy left, I might post some of the more interesting ones I've found. Then again, when is there ever enough time?