Have you ever been asked, “Are you related to the Spalding of athletic equipment fame (Spalding baseball gloves, bats & balls, golf clubs and balls, basketballs, you know)?”

Odds are you answered, “I wish. But, no, my name is spelled S-p-a-u-l-d-i-n-g.”

Wrong! The correct answer is, “Yes, I am. His name was Albert Goodwill Spalding. He was a 10^th-generation and I am a (fill in your number)-generation descendant of Edward Spalding, the first of our family to come to America back in 1619.”

Spalding, Albert G. (1850-1915) – Summary bio

After fully dedicating his career to baseball, in 1871 Albert Goodwill Spalding went on to become pro baseball's first recorded 200 game winner, dividing his time between the Boston Red Stockings and the Chicago White Stockings. As first captain/manager and later as president/owner of the White Stockings, Spalding helped mold Chicago into the baseball dynasty of the 1880s. Yet, it was as an owner that Spalding had his greatest cultural impact. In 1876, he helped found the National League and became its president in 1901. Through such actions, he was key in establishing baseball as a viable and acceptable commercial enterprise. Spalding helped to solidify professional baseball as a business. In addition to his baseball duties, in 1876 he and his brother opened their first sporting goods store in Chicago, the beginning of the Spalding sporting goods chain.

Then if you wanted to embellish, you could add, “Our branch of the family chose to add u to the name about 160 years ago, around 1850. Some branches made the change earlier than we did. Others, including AG’s, never did.”

You could also compare AG’s lineage with your own. His, in abbreviated form, reads: Edward, John, Edward < Edward, Simon, Simon, John, Harry, James and Albert. Notice the first three names are our common great grandfathers. It was after John’s son Edward (at the <) where AG’s part of the family tree and ours branched out in different directions.

Bottom line—we’re related by DNA, but there’s no money in it. Rats!

So, any other notable Spaldings or Spauldings? Absolutely! There have been countless prominent surgeons, lawyers, judges, politicians, authors, warriors, leaders of business and high finance, academicians, clergymen, nurserymen and, of course, everyday farmers, all of whom can credit our original immigrant Edward Spalding as their progenitor.

Okay, another question. Is there a Spalding Coat of Arms? Actually, there are at least ten. Some are of Scottish origin, some English and some French, but connecting any one of them to a particular branch of the New World Spalding/Spaulding family tree is difficult if not impossible at this stage. Further research required.

Finally, was George Hamer (10^th generation, just like A.G.) the first Spalding/Spaulding to come to Colorado? The answer is not by a long shot, although he may have been among the first to establish a legacy—that is, to leave descendants here. For example, Rev John Franklin Spalding (7^th generation) of Belgrade, Maine, graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME, entered the ministry and, in 1873, was elected Bishop of Colorado. With a jurisdiction comprised of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, he resided in Denver where he served as president of the College of St. John the Evangelist. The Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Aurora was named in his honor in 1965. (So too—probably but not yet confirmed—was Mt Spalding, which stands a little west of Denver just north of Mt Evans.) Another of our clan, Capt. William Moore Spalding, came west to Delta, Colorado in 1880 to raise fruit and livestock. Unfortunately, most of his property was taken from him during the Civil War. And how about Jesse Spalding of Chicago, appointed Director of the Union Pacific Railroad about 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison? In that capacity, Jesse surveyed all of the railroad’s property, which ran through Denver. No doubt he spent a fair amount of time in Colorado.          

The Spalding Memorial

The primary source for this information is The Spalding Memorial, once considered the most comprehensive genealogical work in America. Perhaps it still is. The Memorial is a 1308-page book originally completed by Rev. Samuel J. Spalding in 1872. When “Uncle Sam” died, Uncle Charles Warren Spalding obtained the copyright, spent the better part of the next 25 years updating it and republished it in 1896. A century later in 1996, Uncle Chuck’s amazing tome was republished yet again by Spalding Documentation Services, Inc. of Chelmsford, MA as a Centennial edition.

AND GUESS WHAT: As of Christmas 2007, I am in possession of one copy of The Spalding Memorial (Centennial Edition). This invaluable and fascinating genealogical record is to remain in the family and be passed down to whomever is most interested and most likely to maintain and update it for the benefit our descendants. Meanwhile, any member of the clan is welcome to come and peruse it.  – Ger

Many other references exist on the Internet. Web sites of various kinds offer additional information, much of it more current than that available to Charlie Spalding in the late 1800s, but not all of it as credible. Sorting on-line fact from fiction from just bad if well-intended guesswork requires a skeptical, “show me” approach combined with an acute sense of smell—needed, of course, for applying the proverbial smell test.

Spalding family origins

So we know we’re descended from English roots, thanks to Edward having led the way from the Old Country in 1619. But what about the Spalding moniker? Sounds terribly British, what? Guess again. Originally Spalding was a German name. It was brought to England in the 6^th century by Germanic Saxons when they moved in to fill the power vacuum created by the departure of Britain’s Roman conquerors after 500 years of  occupation, the end of which marked the beginning of the Dark Ages. Among the Saxons to settle in eastern England was a Germanic tribe named Spalding. They took control of a settlement left by the Romans in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire and named it after themselves. In turn, those living in the village came to be known as Spaldings (sons of Spalding). The Spaldings eventually migrated from the town north to Scotland, pushed outward from Lincolnshire to other parts of England and many years later forged on to the New World.

Just for the record, exactly where is the town that gave us our family name?

(Hint, look for the big red star.)

♣  Spalding is located a little SE of Nottingham and Sherwood Forest,

     legendary home of…...you know.

Migration continues

Ironically, the Old World Spaldings kept pushing onward and outward from Spalding until all of them were someplace else, over the centuries in effect abandoning their settlement of origin. In a December 4, 1888 letter reproduced in The Spalding Memorial, Reverend George B. Spaulding of Syracuse, New York recounted his visit to the town of Spalding, England, noting, “There are no Spaldings there now…”

We can only speculate as to why the Spaldings gradually deserted the town for which we are named, long the heart and soul of the United Kingdom’s tulip industry and later known as its sausage capital as well. Sausage capital? Wouldn’t that mean pig farms? Ever smell one of those things? Arrrgh! Maybe that’s what chased the Spaldings from their ancestral “Garden of Eden.” Or perhaps a clue may be found in the following tongue-in-cheek entry from a British Wikipedia-like web site called The Uncyclopedia:

Category – “Towns in England”

Spalding is a small collection of supermarkets in Lincolnshire, England perhaps best known for its annual Fertiliser Festival. The number of visitors continues to decline although it still manages to attract a large number of low lifes and creeps from all over the world. Since 2002, it has also held an annual May Day festival in October in an attempt to encourage rumours that it is "the most eccentric town of Lincolnshire"

    Spalding is often considered by southerners, as England's southernmost 'northern' town. By Northerners it is considered a southern town. People from the Midlands generally refer to Spalding as being in East Anglia, whereas East Anglians insist that Spalding is in the Midlands. A number of reasonings are attributed to this thinking, about which the reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions.

   In 1425 there was the so called "South Holland" rebellion in which the entire county of Licolnshire marched to the Geographical Mapping Society in order that Spalding be removed from the map. They were of course met with complete and utter Apathy (and a legion of the King's finest brigade that cut the rising, and the leader's heads, down to size).

    Spalding's secondary modern schools can only be so called because they are the closest thing that spalding has to an education system. A recent OFSTED report stated: "They have playgrounds and are full of kids...they must be schools."

   It is also reported that Spalding has two single-sex free grammar schools. However this is to be doubted, as such schools are clearly a THING OF THE PAST. Inspection of some of the teachers at either school would tend to back up this judgement.

   Tourist attractions in Spalding include Ayscoughfee Hall, which brings millions of visitors per year to gape at its spelling. An important thing to remember about Ayscoughfee is that you are NOT allowed to bring your cattle into the house or gardens.

   As with any town with no viable means of economy or future the people of Spalding rely upon the deaths of wealthy relatives (the town has a Bylaw that actively encourages "Enquickening the death, and easing the pain") and mugging and holding ransom anyone lost or stupid enough to find themselves there.

   The people of Spalding are resentful and full of malice but due to a natural weariness to hard work, little ever comes of this.

   It was recently voted 6th place in the top 200 places worse than hell awards 2005.

   Spalding is due to hold the 2008 World Tulip Conference, seizing its chance in the face of strong opposition from towns such as Fosdyke, Grantham and Butterwick. Buoyed by this success, it is thought that Spalding may enter a last-minute bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

From the web site “Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia,” at this URL:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Spalding

Great, Great….Great Grampa Edward Spalding is born in England   

According to parish records, Edward was Christened on September 13, 1596 in a church called St Peter upon Cornhill (see map below). This record notes that young Edward had been born nine days earlier on September 4, 1596 to parents Willfred, a "cutter", and Anne Spalding.

Historical note. St Peter upon Cornhill is located at the intersection of Cornhill and Bishopsgate Streets in London (not in the town of Spalding as indicated on some web sites). It stands a few blocks north of the point where the current London Bridge crosses the Thames. (The preceding iteration of the London Bridge was disassembled in 1968, most of it taken to America and resurrected as a tourist attraction at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it opened for business in 1971.) Built originally about 1440 A.D., St Peter’s burned to the ground in the 1666 “Great Fire of London”—long after Edward’s Christening. Indeed, when word of the fire likely reached Edward, he’d been in America for 47 years, was 70 years of age and was living in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where he would die three years later. Today’s St Peter’s was constructed during the ten-year period 1677-1687 on the same site as the original church.

Because the Christening took place in a London church, it is assumed that the Spaldings resided somewhere in London at the time of Edward’s birth and that he was born there.

England's King James decides to colonize the New World

As Ed approached his teen years, England’s economy was undergoing significant upheaval. Throughout Europe demand for woolen cloth was increasing, which induced British farmers to raise more sheep. The shift in emphasis from farming to wool production displaced many itinerant farm laborers who in turn flooded the cities looking for work. The result in London and other cities was overcrowding and squalor.

England’s ruling monarch, King James, saw colonies as a way to solve the problem of the growing number of displaced and poor people. The settlement of colonies seemed a promising way of fulfilling England’s desire to sell more goods and resources to other countries than it bought. If colonies could send raw materials, such as lumber, from the abundance of natural resources available there, then England would not have to buy these from other countries. At the same time, colonies could be markets for England’s manufactured goods.

The Virginia Territory of the New World (named for James’s predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I, the unmarried “Virgin Queen,” who died in 1603 when Grampa Ed was only seven) included over 1,000 miles of the East Coast from what is now North Carolina running northward to the middle of Maine. There was ample room to establish colonies.

As a business venture, a group of merchants formed a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company of London. In 1606 (when Eddie was a mere lad of 10) King James I granted the Virginia Company its first charter, which conveyed the right to establish colonies in the southern half of the Virginia Territory and extended all rights of Englishmen to colonists. Under this charter, wealthy men invested money to finance ships and supplies needed for the 4-to-5-month voyage to Virginia. A royal council made up of 13 members was appointed by King James to govern the enterprise. Another branch of the company, the Virginia Company of Plymouth, was granted the right to establish colonies in the northern half of Virginia, that is, from northern Chesapeake Bay to what is now central Maine.

The first three ships carrying English colonists—Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery—reached Chesapeake Bay on 26 April 1607, after which the 104 intrepid colonists aboard chose a site for their settlement and named it Jamestown in honor of their king.

Now, you’re probably wishing you’d paid more attention during your Early American History classes, eh? Don't worry, be happy and read on.

While the first colonists were busy establishing a “beachhead” in Virginia, Great Grampa Edward was still back in England doing whatever 11-year-old boys did back in the early 17^th century—listening to Beatles platters...or whatever. Probably working as an intern and learning a trade. Remember that Christening record? It listed Eddie’s father Willfred as a “cutter.” Who knows what things he cut, but it could well have been woolen fabric. Was he a tailor, did he work in some other capacity in the textile industry? A cutter. Was he a glass cutter, a class cutter, a circumciser? Whether "cutter" was a surname or an occupation, likely Ed was learning the same trade as his father's. It would be another dozen years before he’d join the party in the New World.

Except that it was anything but a party. It was nasty! Here’s an abbreviated timeline just to keep things in perspective:

May 1607 – First rudimentary fort built at Jamestown, followed almost immediately by the first attack by the Powhatan (Algonquian) Indians. The Colonists then built a better fort (because someone said, "We're gonna need a better fort." Remember Jaws?).

 Colonists arriving in Virginia 1607

Sep 1607 – About half of the original 104 colonists have died from starvation, dysentery, and typhoid resulting in large part from the fact that the James, one of four rivers feeding the Chesapeake Bay, is badly polluted by Mother Nature and the Indians, who have inhabited the region for 16,000 years, but had little respect for the environment. The Powhatans bring food which helps sustain the English survivors.

Dec 1607 – All members of a food gathering expedition except its leader John Smith are killed by Indians. Smith is spared by Chief Powhatan, legend has it, due to the intervention of the Chief’s favorite daughter Matoaka, referred to as "Pocahontas" by the English newcomers. Historians now believe Smith saved his own life by showing his compass to the Chief’s half brother. Perhaps he explained its workings by quoting Woody Allen: “A compass is an instrument that tells you where you are in the world. For example, if you are standing on a corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a compass would tell you that you’re standing on a corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The compass was invented by Alexander Compass, who also invented rocks and fog.”  

Jan 1608 – The next batch of immigrants arrives to discover that only 38 of the original colonists are still alive and, of those, only ten are able to work.

1608-1609 – After fire destroys the fort and yet another one is built, matters improve dramatically under the authoritarian leadership of John Smith, who decrees: “He that will not work shall not eat!” (Except he spelled it “eate.”)

Aug 1609 – Several hundred new settlers arrive, followed shortly thereafter by a severe drought, making life difficult for the colonists and Indians alike. Smith returns to England, even as acting Governor Sir Thomas Gates, en route from England, has been caught in a hurricane and shipwrecked in Bermuda. 

1609-1610 – “Starving time.” Drought causes more fighting between colonists and the Indians.

May 1610 – Fort is in ruins and only 90 colonists remain alive when Gates finally arrives from Bermuda with 100 new settlers.

 Eventually the colonists built a more sophisticated fort.

Jun 1610 – Thomas West, aka Lord de la Warr (Delaware, get it?), the Colony’s first real governor, arrives with new provisions and more settlers.

May 1611 – Young Grampa Eddie is a gangly teenager of 15 in England. Perhaps as a precursor of the long-standing Spalding tradition, he has now probably discovered girls. William Shakespeare is 47 and nearing the end of his career. His The Winters Tale plays at London’s Globe Theatre on 15 May. In Jamestown, meanwhile, new lieutenant governor Sir Thomas Dale arrives with 300 new settlers, soldiers, supplies, livestock and seeds. Dale becomes acting governor. He’s a strong law-and-order leader, yet morale tanks.

1613 – A colonist hunting party kidnaps Pocahontas for use as barter in negotiating the release of immigrants being held captive by the Indians. Negotiations for her return end five years of vicious fighting and bring eight years of relative peace. Pocahontas learns English, converts to Christianity and takes the name Rebecca.

April 1614 – Pocahontas (as Rebecca) marries John Rolfe, one of the colonists who had been shipwrecked with Gates in Bermuda.

1616 -- A farmer who has developed a unique strain of tobacco, Rolfe takes it and Pocahontas to England. King James, an ardent non-smoker, never experiences Rolfe’s tobacco, but is taken with the 21-year-old Pocahontas. Known as “Pocahontas Lady Rebecca Matoaka Rolfe,” she receives a royal welcome and becomes the talk of London. Grampa Edward is only one year younger than Pocahontas. He must have at least heard descriptions of this fascinating celebrity, and possibly even saw her in person or on Oprah. Who knows, her presence in London may well have inspired him to come to the New World. We can almost read his mind: “If that’s what the Indian women in Virginia are like, I’m gonna get me some a dat!”

Mar 1617 – While John and Rebecca are preparing to return to Virginia, Pocahontas succumbs to pneumonia, smallpox or TB and dies at age 22. Later that year, John makes it back to the Virginia Colony, where he will eventually remarry, then die at age 37. Shortly after Rolfe notifies Powhatan of his daughter's death, Powhatan resigns his leadership, entrusting it to his brother Opitchapan, and moves to a site as far as possible from the English settlements. Just a year later, in 1618, he dies.

1619 – Jamestown has now exported over 10 tons of tobacco to England and is becoming a mini boomtown. Newly appointed governor Sir George Yeardley arrives in April. He brings new orders, which authorize self-governance of Jamestown. 

   In this year, a very special event takes place in the church at Jamestown when the first representative assembly in America meets to write some of the colony’s laws. In twelve relatively short years, government at Jamestown had evolved from a small council of seven men to this General Assembly milestone.

   Tobacco farming is extremely labor intensive. When a Dutch ship carrying black slaves from Angola passes by, the colonists trade food for 20 of them to help with the farming, forcing them into indentured servitude. As such they were essentially contract employees for a specified number of years; they were not slaves in the true sense, although the distinction between involuntary indentured servitude and slavery may well have been lost on them.

At age 23 “Eddie” leads Spalding migration to America

In The Spalding Memorial, Uncle Chuck writes: “After careful and diligent research, conclusive evidence proves that Edward Spalding came over from England with Sir George Yeardley in 1619 or about that time (that is, nearly two years before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock in the Mayflower). The supposition is that Edward and his younger brother Edmund Spalding emigrated together from England about 1619; that some years later Edward went to the Massachusetts Colony, while Edmund joined the Maryland Colony under Lord Baltimore. Edmund undoubtedly was the progenitor of the family known as the “Maryland Branch…..” “We shall speak here of Edward Spalding, the progenitor of the New England Family of that name. Edward of Virginia and Edward of Massachusetts Bay, without doubt, are identical.”  

1620 – Some 90 unmarried women from Mother England arrive aboard the “Bride ship” as prospective brides for colonists without wives. Whereas earlier immigrants were predominantly of the male persuasion, now increasing numbers of married couples and families begin to make the arduous voyage to the New World. Husbands and wives often make the journey on different ships.

Mar 1622 – Opitchapan's successor, the warlike Opechancanough, instigates 10 years of war with the “Indian Massacre of 1622.” Some 350 colonists and many Jamestown plantations are wiped out reducing the population from about 1400 to 1050. The Abigail arrives in December carrying no food, but a load of diseased passengers who infect the Jamestown survivors and reduce the distraught population even further.  

.

1623 – More from Uncle Chuck in The Spalding Memorial:  “The first known authentic record of the Spalding Family in America appears in a Virginia State Document (Senate Report) entitled ‘Virginia Colonial Records, 1619-1680,’ published in 1874 by the State Superintendent of Public Printing, Richmond, VA.” He adds, “There is documentary evidence that Edward and his family were fully established in the Virginia Colony in the year 1623, as his name appears in these ‘Virginia Colonial Records.’ On page 37 of that work is given ‘Lists of the Living and the Dead in Virginia, Feb. 16, 1623.’”  (Note, this was a census of sorts taken several months after the 1622 massacre to determine who was still alive - Ed.)

    “In this list, under the caption ‘Att James Citie and within the Corporation thereof,’ is to be found, in ‘List of the Linvinge:’

      ‘Mr. CANN,

       CAPT HARTT,

       EDWARD SPALDING,

       uxor (wife) SPALDING,

       puer (son) SPALDING,

       puella (daughter) SPALDING,

       JOHN HELIN,

       uxor HELIN,        

       puer HELIN,

       infant HELIN.’

   “These names appear in one group, and probably formed a single household. On page 53, in the same list, under the caption of ‘More at Elizabeth Cittie,’ appears the name of

       ‘EDMUND SPALDING.’”

   Relying on this list, Uncle Chuck concludes that Edward had in fact established a family in Virginia by 1623. But subsequently he asserts that Edward’s first child, John, was not born until about 1631, some eight years later. Meanwhile, another Jamestown census, taken in 1624, lists EDWARD SPALDING and EDMUND SPALDING, but makes no mention of a wife or children bearing that surname. This raises the distinct possibility that the uxor, puer and puella SPALDING included in the 1623 ‘List of the Livinge’ were not Edward’s family at all. Pure speculation, of course, but they may have been the wife, son and daughter of a man who’d died in the massacre, an “orphaned” family whom Edward temporarily took under his wing as surviving colonists were forced to crowd into the reduced number of homes still standing after the attack. This woman and her children may well have joined those who, in the wake of the massacre, decided to leave Jamestown for more promising environs elsewhere (England, Bermuda, or Massachusetts, for example), as both Edward and Edmund also did sometime after the 1624 census. At some point, the HELIN family relocated and settled permanently in Bermuda. It's entirely possible that Edward, and perhaps Edmund, went with them.

   Again quoting Uncle Chuck: “Prior to emigrating to Massachusetts, Edward Spalding may have lived a number of years in the Bermuda Islands (then called the Summer Islands).” While it is impossible to confirm this, several on-line entries indicate that Edward and Margaret may have been married in Bermuda and that at least their first child, John, was born there. Bermuda most certainly would have been a safer environment than Jamestown for starting a family. If, as Uncle Chuck concluded, the Edward Spalding family arrived in Braintree, MA circa 1634, John would have been the only child of theirs born in Bermuda.

Back for a moment to the unfinished business of the Jamestown timeline.

1624 – While individual tobacco growers are doing quite well, overall Jamestown is a bust for investors as a profit making venture. In 1624, the King revokes the Colony’s charter and declares Virginia a Royal Colony under his direct control. This may have been the final straw that causes Edward and Edmund to board a departing ship and sail away to greener pastures.

1644-1651 – Powhatan's confederacy, decimated by disease and a futile war against a never-ending wave of immigrants, is completely subjugated by 1644. In 1651 the country's first Indian Reservation is established in Virginia for the remnants of Pocahontas' people.

1699 – The Virginia statehouse moves 10 miles inland to Williamsburg. What little remains of Jamestown is finally abandoned.

 Migration to Massachusetts

    After arriving in the Massachusetts Colony from Bermuda, Edward Spalding is residing in Braintree, Massachusetts on May 13, 1640. On this day, he becomes a freeman, meaning he is a member of the established church, entitling him to serve in some governmental capacity, to be a magistrate, to receive land grants, and to serve on a jury.

   Grampa Edward’s first wife, Grandma Margaret (mother of John, Edward Jr. and Grace), dies in 1640 in Braintree. Edward moves about 35 miles north, where he is among the first settlers of the town of Chelmsford. He marries Rachel, who would deliver his last four children, Benjamin, Joseph, Dinah and Andrew. In 1645, Edward's name appears on the petition for the Chelmsford land grant and he is present at the first town meeting on Nov. 22, 1654.

   Edward dies on Feb 26, 1669 in Chelmsford, followed by Rachel the following year. They are buried in a Chelmsford cemetery now called "Forefathers Burying Ground, 1655."

   Regarding the spelling of the name, in his will, dated Feb 13, 1667, Edward refers to himself as Edward Spalden, to his wife as Rachel Spalding, to two of his sons as John Spalding and Edward Spalden and to his then living daughter as Dynah Spalding, suggesting that Spalden and Spalding were used interchangeably. But it will be another 183 years or so before the first member of our branch of the family, James B. Spaulding, opts to Americanize the spelling of his name by incorporating the letter u.  

   From Chelmsford, Spaldings migrate to Norfolk, Connecticut, New Marlboro, Massachusetts, New Hudson, New York and, and eventually to Springfield, Illinois.

Moving west to Illinois

Shepard Spaulding is first of clan to migrate to Illinois; establishes town of Spaulding a few miles from Springfield. (But just like Spalding, England, according to People Search, no Spaldings or Spauldings live in Spaulding, IL now)

Following text copied from: http://www.elginhistory.com/dgb/ch13.htm

In the area to our east, where boundary lines of the village of Bartlett and the city of Elgin now meet, or come close to meeting, was once a place called Spaulding. The name was derived from that of Shepard Spaulding, an early day pioneer who emigrated from Steuben County, New York, to claim land in Hanover Township. In 1843, be purchased from the government about 240 acres of land located approximately four miles southeast of the little settlement of Elgin.

When the Chicago & Pacific railway (which became the Milwaukee Road and is now the Soo Line) was constructed from Chicago to Elgin through Hanover Township in 1873, a siding was established on the Spaulding farm. It was a convenient access point for the farmers, chiefly dairymen, in the neighborhood.

In 1887, the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad (EJ&E) was projected to form a belt line around Chicago from Indiana to Joliet and then to Waukegan. The original plan assumed that its tracks would enter Elgin, but this was discarded when the North Western and Milwaukee lines indicated a lack of cooperation.

Instead the railroad was routed through Hanover and reached the Milwaukee tracks at Spaulding in June, 1888. Although the city of Elgin did not annex portions of the EJ&E until 1962, local businessmen protested whenever the railroad was rumored to be considering dropping the word "Elgin" from its name.

In 1910 there was talk of extending the local street car line from the Bluff City Cemetery entrance to the Spaulding crossing, which would be renamed "East Elgin", but nothing came of the idea.

A little community arose around the Spaulding junction, including a hotel-boarding house occupied by railroad workers. A three-story oatmeal mill and elevator was built in 1892 by the Elgin Cereal Milling Company. The factory, which employed six to eight hands, passed through financial straits during the general business depression which began the next year. It was not profitable until reorganized as the Elgin Breakfast Food Company, headed by Henry lKirchoff of Bensenville.

A one-room Spaulding school was located on the north side of Spaulding road, about a half-mile east of the railroad station. Before World War I, its bell called about 40 farm children to their lessons.

The Chicago Gravel Company began operating steam shovels and a stone crushing plant at gravel pits nearby in 1903. Spurs running from the EJ&E carried the product to the main lines. Spaulding Road between Illinois 25 and Gifford Road was vacated in 1937 for the widening gravel mines.

The EJ&E provided passenger service for several years. In August, 1889, for example, a large group of Elgin excursionists went to Spaulding via the Milwaukee and purchased tickets to Joliet, where they paid an admission fee of 25 cents each to tour the penitentiary and later attended harness races. The trip from Spaulding, 38 miles, was made in an hour. "For a new road," commented the Daily News reporter, "the Elgin is remarkably well ballasted."

Trains had to slow down for the crossing, and Spaulding became a favorite place among boys for the sport of flipping freight trains by catching hold of the handrail and climbing up the side of the car. The junction also attracted tramps for the same reason.

In 1959, some owners of farm land proposed incorporating Spaulding to control zoning. The boundaries of the proposed village had an irregular shape to keep its limits a mile from those of Elgin and Bartlett. They ranged from the DuPage County line on the south to Highway 19 on the north. Of the 90 residents eligible to vote in the referendum, 39 were against incorporating and 22 in favor.

Fires destroyed the boarding house in 1896 and the mill in 1900. The little district school became part of Elgin's U-46 system in 1951 and was closed. The Spaulding depot was abandoned and later consumed by fire. With the removal of the signal tower in 1988, nothing much is left at the junction today. Passengers on the commuter trains leaving or approaching ????? (text missing).

Filling in the blanks.

This section derived from: The Spalding Memorial

Shepard Spaulding (born Sep 13, 1805; d. June 15, 1865).  7^th-generation descendant of Edward Spalding, the family’s original immigrant from England. While the Colorado Spaulding branch of the family tree runs through Edward’s son John, Shepard’s branch runs from Edward through Joseph, another of his five sons. (Edward also had two daughters.)  Joseph’s part of the family expanded in Plainfield, CN before migrating to New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. 

Shepard Spaulding came from New York to the Springfield area in 1843. James B. Spaulding, who would have been a nephew of Shepard’s, followed some 15 years later in 1858. Whether Shepard’s presence there influenced JB to migrate to Springfield is unknown, but it seems likely.

Spaulding, Illinois, is located on Route 54 only eight miles NE of Springfield and St John’s Hospital, where George Homer was born in 1918.

The house where George Hamer lived (whether independently or with his parents, Milton and third wife Lula) before coming to Colorado was located on Rural Route 4, which eventually became part of the famous Route 66 and today is a four-lane highway called Veterans Parkway. The original Illinois 4 went from Chicago to St. Louis over what became US 66.

In Springfield....

In 1858, James B. Spaulding (8^th generation) moves his family to Springfield, Illinois, where he renews a previous acquaintanceship with Abraham Lincoln. What follows is an excerpt from Six Historic Americans a book written by John E. Remsburg and published in 1906. This passage is found in Chapter X, “Testimony of Lincoln’s Relatives And Intimate Associates.” James B. Spaulding is listed as one of the latter:

Mr. J. B. Spaulding, well known as one of the leading nurserymen and horticulturists of the United States, a man of broad culture and refinement, who resides near Springfield, became intimately acquainted with Lincoln as early as 1851, and for a long time resided on the same street with him in Springfield. Mr. Spaulding says: “Lincoln perpetrated many an irreverent joke at the expense of church doctrines. Regarding the miraculous conception, he was especially sarcastic. He wrote a manuscript as radical as Ingersoll which his political friends caused to be destroyed."

Two years before publication of Remsburg’s book, there appeared another by a Springfield lawyer named Joseph Wallace that included a brief biography of James B’s son Milton E. Spaulding. Below is the Milton E. passage  from this book, published in 1904 and entitled: Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon County Illinois. 

Milton E. Spaulding, whose home is on section 7, Springfield township, has long been identified with the agricultural and horticultural interests of Sangamon county, having located here in 1858. He is now the owner of two farms aggregating one hundred and forty-four acres of land, his home place being a tract of eighty acres on the Sangamon river.

   A native of New York, Mr. Spaulding was born in Allegany county on the 26th of October, 1851, and is a son of James B. Spaulding, whose birth occurred in Connecticut in 1825. The father was reared in his native state, and when a young man went to Allegany county, New York, where he engaged in the manufacture of lumber for a number of years. There he married Miss Mary C. Smith, a native of the Empire state and a daughter of Thomas P. Smith. In 1858 they removed with their family to Illinois and took up their residence in Springfield, the father establishing the first nursery in that city. He soon built up a fine business, which he continued to carry on up to the time of his death, though he removed his nursery to Riverton and made that his home for some years. In his family were two sons, I. H. being now a resident of Springfield.

   Milton E. Spaulding, the other son, grew to manhood in this county and was educated in the city schools. Reared under the parental roof he early became familiar with horticulture and was for four years proprietor of a greenhouse and nursery in Springfield, which his father had given him. At the end of that time he removed to Hancock county, Illinois, where he engaged in selling nursery stock for three years. He then returned to Sangamon county and purchased eighty acres of land in Springfield township, where he now resides. To its improvement and development he has since devoted his energies, first clearing away the trees and brush and erecting thereon a small house and barn, besides setting out an orchard of five acres. As time has passed he has planted more trees and today has a fine orchard of fifteen acres, and also a great variety of small fruit. In addition to fruit culture Mr. Spaulding is also engaged in the dairy business, making a specialty of butter, which he sells to private customers, and is interested to some extent in the raising of poultry for the market. Besides his home place he now owns another tract of sixty-four acres, which is devoted to ordinary farming. He has improved and enlarged his residence, so that he now has a good, substantial home, and everything about the place is in perfect harmony therewith.

   In Springfield, November 17, 1874, Mr. Spaulding was united in marriage to Miss Zeruah Grace Hamer, who was born in Pennsylvania, but was reared in this county, where she died on the 24th of January, 1892, leaving three children, namely: James, George and Grace. Our subject was again married March 9, 1893, his second union being with Mary E. Meschnark, by whom he had one son, Rollie E. On the 14th of December, 1899, in this county, Mr. Spaulding married Miss Lula Gabert, who was born here, and is a daughter of Jasper M. Gabert, of Sangamon county.

   Though reared a Republican, Mr. Spaulding generally supports the Democratic party, but at local elections votes independent of party lines, supporting the men whom he believes best qualified for office. He has never cared for political preferment, but devotes his entire time and attention to his business interests, in which he has been eminently successful. During the long years of his residence in this county he has become widely and favorably known, and well merits the high regard in which he is uniformly held.

Two of Milton's sons, George Hamer and James B, will eventually carry the Spaulding legacy to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  George Hamer marries Mabel Kizer in 1910. Their son, George Homer, is born in Springfield eight years later on Jul 12, 1918. Click on the link below for the 1919 migration-to-Colorado phase of the Spaulding saga, photos included:

The Spaulding Place: First Colorado Roots

or to review the lineage chart, go to

The Spaulding Lineage: Spalding, England to Colorado

or click here to go to

Lives & Times of George and Ila (complements The Saga Narrative)

or return to

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