Spains, Spaynes and Plagues

To record or not to record, that is the genealogical question. I’ve just updated the website, making two major leaps of faith to fill in the family in the early to mid-nineteenth century. With only the knowledge that the Rev. Thomas was born in Lincoln, I searched for his father Thomas and came up with Thomas Burkill Spain in the parish of St. Swithin’s, Lincoln (Lincolnshire County Council doing a sterling job going through parish records and digitizing them). He’s recorded twice as father of the bride for Mary Ann and Elizabeth, and joy of joys, the former girl is recorded in a Google Doc. as marrying a descendent of John Wood. So this is all looking pretty solid.

Then you look at the other Spains in the list. And it looks like Thomas B. had brothers living in his parish with daughters too. These men, John and William are marked in with question marks. I hope to firm this up. There are also Williams and Henrys I can’t include because either they’re of a subsequent generation and I don’t know who the father is, or they’re of the same generation, but in a different parish.

Add to this that we have a record of Spaynes in Heckington dying of the plague in the mid-16th century, and you start to ask, why do we need Ancestry.com when we have the glory of Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Anyway, these Spaynes may be unrelated (and only the spelling caused me pause as the Crest was always titled ‘Spayne’) and I mention them only to ensure that when I get back to that era I have a note of their location ;-).