English Ancestry of Maryland Thomas Sprigg (1629-1704)

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Surname/tag: Sprigg

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Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 20:07:46 -0400

From: "David Armstrong" heraldry(at)meer.net>

To: MDSTMARY(at)rootsweb.com>

Subject: [MDSTMARY] Sprigg

THE ENGLISH ANCESTRY OF MARYLAND THOMAS SPRIGG

For many years persons interested in the background of Thomas Sprigg (1629-1704) , colonial leader of Maryland, have cast about looking for the identity of his parents. It has become the general belief that his parents were one Thomas Sprigg of London and wife Catherine Griffin. This has made its way into the IGI and onto the Internet to such an extent that it will likely be around for a very long time. The unfortunate thing is that those who have followed this line of thought have not confirmed the sources.

The confusion apparently began when some person or persons looked at two London wills, one of a Sprigg relative and one apparently not. The will of David Griffin mentions his sister Catherine Sprigg and her children (one of whom was named Thomas) but clearly shows that this Catherine was living in Gloucestershire. This document has been merged with another, the will of London merchant Thomas Sprigg who died in 1678 and WAS related to Maryland Thomas but was not his father. This Sprigg mentions children in his will but not a son Thomas. There is no evidence of a connection between these two documents and thus the fictional "Thomas Sprigg and Catherine Griffin" never existed as a couple and were not the parents of Maryland Thomas.

Having dealt briefly with what is NOT the background of the Sprigg family of present interest it is thought useful to provide some notes about his real English background. One of the British gentry he lived in the time of the English Civil Wars, and was one of thousands who colonized America.

The Maryland Hall of Records in Annapolis has an inventory of the estate of one Martin Faulkner upon which is still affixed the seal impressed in wax by Thomas Sprigg. It is likely that he would have carried this seal on a ring. The seal is a coat of arms, the one that illustrates many Sprigg genealogy writings in America. The language of heraldry is complicated, cumbersome and almost mathematical. It would be useless to try to explain such a thing here. For the present purpose it can be said that the seal that Sprigg impressed on the Faulkner estate record can be officially described as "Checky...A Fess Ermine."

The College of Heralds in London is the official body responsible for the granting and recording of any officially sanctioned coat of arms. They were good enough to check their records and provide a list of persons (there is no such thing as a FAMILY coat of arms) who were entitled to use that pattern as coat armor. There are several but the ones of interest are Spriggy in Norfolk and St. John of Bletsoe. Taking these in order the shield was officially recognized as having belonged to one Lawrence Spriggy who lived in Norfolk in the 1300s. This Lawrence and his family are in various records during the period but curiously not among those listed in the Norfolk roll of arms in 1395.

At that time complete regulation of heraldry had not yet been established and the shield could have been carried from him to anywhere including Northamptonshire where the name Spriggy appears in the 1400s and becomes Sprigge and Sprigg. No proof of any connection between these early Spriggs and Maryland Thomas Sprigg has been found but such a link is an avenue for further research.

The College of Heralds also reports that the pattern was an unidentified quartering on the arms of St. John of Bletsoe. This may be a clue as the actual English ancestors of Maryland Thomas Sprigg's relatives were associates and perhaps relatives of the St. Johns in Northamptonshire.

The coat of arms that Sprigg was using had a differencing mark that usually indicates the bearer being a sixth son of his father. Since the heralds do not record that Thomas Sprigg was ever entitled to this coat armor it may be that he was using it without sanction and may have taken it "as is" from some other shield. It is not certain however that his father was old enough to have had five older boys by 1629 unless there were some twins in the family. Whether the pattern had been brought to Northamptonshire by the Spriggs above mentioned or Thomas Sprigg picked it up from the St. Johns is not clear.

It has been suggested that Thomas Sprigg was born at Kettering in Northamptonshire since he gave that name to a tract of land in Maryland. The parish registers for Kettering are not extant for the time period that would confirm this. While a record of Sprigg's birth has not been found his family has. The confirmed record of the Sprigg family of Maryland and West Virginia begins with the 1690 will of John Sprigg of Great Bowden, Leicester, which is on the Northamptonshire border. This document is in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills at the PRO in Kew. Further mention of Maryland Thomas will follow but first a bit about the Spriggs in the will may be useful.

John Sprigg was apparently an old man and single as he mentions no children but does mention over a dozen relatives including "Thomas Sprigg son of my brother William Sprigg should the the said Thomas Sprigg ever return into England and demand the same (his legacy)." This alone would not identify the family but other statements in the document do.

The difficulty with researching the Spriggs in Northamptonshire even as early as the 1500s is the sheer numbers. There are 12 male Spriggs born in the one little parish of Great Bowden (then in Northamptonshire) between 1571 and 1597. Untangling all of the family connections would be an ambitious project if it were even possible. Perhaps some future energetic descendant will undertake this task. Mention is made of these numbers to show why it will be difficult to identify exactly how the earliest generation of Thomas Sprigg's family were connected. The repetition of the names of Thomas and Richard in the family does not help matters, but the name of Edward is more rare and apparently common in Maryland Tom's branch of the family. The John Sprigg who left the will was a son of Thomas Sprigg of Harrington, Northamptonshire. This Thomas Sprigg was in the "trained bands" (militia) of the shire and shows up at Kettering in a muster in 1618. Based on the John Sprigg will Harrington Thomas had a daughter married to one William Osborne and a granddaughter married to Robert Osborne. He also had a son named Edward Sprigg, an uncle of Maryland Thomas. These connections account for Lt. Col. Thomas Sprigg Jr., son of the immigrant, naming sons Edward Sprigg and Osborn Sprigg. Osborn Sprigg was the ancestor of governor Sprigg of Maryland.

Harrington Thomas Sprigg was closely associated with one Richard Sprigg who lived at Scaldwell in Northamptonshire. Thomas Sprigg of Harrington had a son William (one of many William Spriggs in the records) and this William was the father of Thomas Sprigg of Maryland and Virginia. Another son of Harrington Thomas Sprigg was John, of Great Bowden, who left the will noticed above.

American Thomas Sprigg was born between October and December of 1629 based on calculating the change in his age between two depositions in Maryland rather than in 1630 as had been thought. When Maryland Thomas was 12 years old this uncle John Sprigg married Ann Wright. The bond for this marriage has several people as securities and one of them is Richard Sprigg, Gentleman, of Scaldwell. "Gentleman" was the class of society next below the nobility and they were eligible to have a coat of arms. If Richard Sprigg had one no record has turned up to show it. The will of John Sprigg (eldest son of Thomas according to the marriage bond) named a niece Mary Wright.

Also mentioned in John Sprigg's will was his brother in law Thomas Watts. In 1646 a bond was executed between Thomas Watts of Sur Langdon, County Leicester and Thomas Sprigg of Harrington. This bond was for the marriage of Thomas Watts to Mary, daughter of Thomas Sprigg of Harrington. Watts was alive in 1690 when John Sprigg wrote his will. Sprigg must have been getting on in years by that time, being the eldest son of Harrington Thomas, perhaps over 80.

Thomas Sprigg of Harrington must have been born about 1580 or a bit before, despite family trees that use a later date. When the "trayned man" Thomas Sprigg was mustered at Kettering in October of 1617 his residence was "Bowden Parva" or "Little Bowden." He may have gone to Harrington by 1624 as someone named Sprigg paid 2 shillings tax there in that year according to the "Survey of Harrington and Great Bowden." His wife was named Ann, and he must have had ten or more children. The bonds mentioned above with the will of John Sprigg identify the known ones as John, Mary, Edward, William (father of Maryland Thomas), Richard, and Thomas. In addition there was one daughter who married one William Osborne, a daughter who married John Dix and had a son Jonathan, and a daughter Anne who Henry Robinson and had a daughter Ann. There may have been others.

Richard Sprigg son of Harrington Thomas may be identical with the Richard Sprigg of Northampton town who is identified as having a daughter Elizabeth who married Robert Osborne of Hackleton about 1680. She died shortly and brother John left a bequest to the children of Osborne "begotten by my kinswoman Elizabeth Sprigg." Edward Sprigg may have been named after an earlier Edward Sprigg, known to have been christened at Lubenham in Leicestershire in the 1500s, son of Robert Sprigg.

Little is known about William Sprigg the father of Maryland Thomas. There were several William Spriggs in the area. It is one of the given names that the Spriggs loved to repeat. One William Sprigg was among the appraisers of the estate of William Palmer of Scaldwell in 1682. This is too recent to be the father of Thomas but it is interesting. The Spriggs and Palmers were associated from the 1617 muster rolls through the marriage of one Humphrey Sprigg to Elizabeth Palmer at Kettering when Maryland Thomas was a child.

The notes here are an all too brief mention of the proven ancestors of Maryland Thomas Sprigg. As noted a possible theory is that Harrington Thomas Sprigg could have been a brother of Richard Sprigg of Scaldwell who in turn was likely the father of Thomas of London. This Thomas went to London where he died leaving a will and it is that will that has been erroneously paired with the Griffin will to create fictional parents of Maryland Thomas as noticed above. A few words about this branch of the family may be useful however as it is possible that this Thomas Sprigg was a factor in the immigration of Maryland Thomas. At the time Maryland Thomas Sprigg became a teenager England was a war zone. Parliamentary forces under Cromwell battled Cavaliers (Royalists) who favored the Stuart king. Part of this fighting took place in Northamptonshire, including the great battle of Naseby. The general population of the shire was overwhelmingly Parliamentarian and it may be that Maryland Thomas left (he being a Cavalier) for that reason. In addition to this Thomas Sprigg grew up in a time that the colonization of the Americas was in full swing. In America younger sons of English gentry (who would inherit nothing under the system of primogeniture) could buy offices and make their fortunes. Many royalists fled to Virginia at the time of the Civil Wars and one of these was Thomas Sprigg.

The life of Thomas Sprigg of Maryland between 1629 and 1651 is not known. Some speculations can be made however. He MIGHT be the Thomas Sprigg who was "absent abroad" in the 1649 estate record of John Andrews of London. If so he had an earlier wife than Catherine Graves as this absent Thomas Sprigg was married to a woman named Maudlin in 1649. One of the colonial leaders of Eastern Shore Virginia (where Sprigg went first) was Obedience Robbins from Northamptonshire whose brother immigrated from Long Buckby via St Dunstans in the East parish in London. This is the same parish in which the merchant Thomas Sprigg lived.

At the time of his removal to America Thomas Sprigg was about 21 years old. Shortly after his arrival in Virginia he married the widow Catherine (Graves) Roper who at the time was the sister in law of William Stone, governor of Maryland. She was about ten years older than Thomas. Sprigg soon was a lieutenant and given these circumstances it seems likely that this marriage was not a romance as much as a way for a younger son to make good in the new world. London Thomas Sprigg identified his brother Richard of Scaldwell in his will and also noted that he (Thomas) owned land at Scaldwell. The merchant Thomas had became quite wealthy, leaving over 2000 pounds in cash to various people in his will. At that time he was married to Ruth, the apparent widow of one Hugh Horton. He also may have been the Thomas Sprigg who was "absent abroad" in 1649 if he had an earlier marriage to a lady named Maudlin. This could be accounted for as a business trip (he was affiliated with the British West India Company) or maybe he brought Maryland Thomas to Virginia, introducing him to the right people. Such is only speculation however.

Another avenue of speculation might be that Sprigg's immigration had something to do with the Obedience Robbins mentioned above. Robbins was a leader on the Eastern Shore of Virginia which area was as Royalist as Northamptonshire was Parliamentarian. Robbins was a witness along with one William Andrews to the first American document that names Thomas Sprigg. This was essentially a pre-nuptial agreement in which it was stated that Sprigg was to have no part of the estate of Catherine Roper's daughter Verlinda. From this point on the life of Thomas Sprigg is well documented.

Sprigg moved in just a few years to Maryland and lived most of his life at Resurrection Manor in today's St. Mary's County. Late in life he moved to a tract which he named Northampton in today's Prince Georges County. The house there stood until the early 1900s and in modern terms was located just outside and east of the interstate beltway that goes around Washington, DC. This tract was inherited by his son, Lt. Col. Thomas Sprigg Jr. at the time of Sprigg Sr.'s death in 1704.

It was Thomas Jr. who named sons Edward and Osborn, reflecting the family connections back in Northamptonshire. Osborn Sprigg was the progenitor Governor Samuel Sprigg of Maryland. Space does not permit anything even close to a complete accounting of the known English ancestors of Maryland Thomas Sprigg. It may be however that the notes above will settle the matter of his parentage and prove the error of the tale that has created a couple "Thomas Sprigg and Catherine Griffin" and made them his parents. Perhaps some researcher in the future will want to attempt to untangle the family connections in England. There is plenty left to do.

By David Armstrong, 201 Graham St., Elkins, WV, 26241 e-mail heraldry(at)meer.net (Based on new information found in May 2007. Subject to correction and/or update)

THE ENGLISH ANCESTRY OF MARYLAND THOMAS SPRIGG

When Maryland Thomas was 12 years old this uncle John Sprigg married Ann Wright. The bond for this marriage has several people as securities and one of them is Richard Sprigg, Gentleman, of Scaldwell. "Gentleman" was the class of society next below the nobility and they were eligible to have a coat of arms. If Richard Sprigg had one no record has turned up to show it. The will of John Sprigg (eldest son of Thomas according to the marriage bond) named a niece Mary Wright.

Sprigg must have been getting on in years by that time, being the eldest son of Harrington Thomas, perhaps over 80. Thomas Sprigg of Harrington must have been born about 1580 or a bit before, despite family trees that use a later date. When the "trayned man" Thomas Sprigg was mustered at Kettering in October of 1617 his residence was "Bowden Parva" or "Little Bowden." He may have gone to Harrington by 1624 as someone named Sprigg paid 2 shillings tax there in that year according to the "Survey of Harrington and Great Bowden."

His wife was named Ann, and he must have had ten or more children. The bonds mentioned above with the will of John Sprigg identify the known ones as John, Mary, Edward, William (father of Maryland Thomas), Richard, and Thomas. In addition there was one daughter who married one William Osborne, a daughter who married John Dix and had a son Jonathan, and a daughter Anne who Henry Robinson and had a daughter Ann. There may have been others. Richard Sprigg son of Harrington Thomas may be identical with the Richard Sprigg of Northampton town who is identified as having a daughter Elizabeth who married Robert Osborne of Hackleton about 1680. She died shortly and brother John left a bequest to the children of Osborne "begotten by my kinswoman Elizabeth Sprigg." Edward Sprigg may have been named after an earlier Edward Sprigg, known to have been christened at Lubenham in Leicestershire in the 1500s, son of Robert Sprigg.

David Armstrong, 201 Graham St., Elkins, WV, 26241 e-mail heraldry(at)meer.net (Based on new information found in May 2007. Subject to correction and/or update)

---Original Message ---

From: Gwen Boyer Bjorkman

To: David Armstrong

Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 10:54 PM

Subject: Thomas Sprigg

I was reading your report on Thomas Sprigg in 2007 and I wondered if you have found any more information on the Sprigg family. Thanks so much for sharing all of this with everyone on the internet!

(http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=nlndgrn&id=I13541)

Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 20:07:46 -0400

From: "David Armstrong" heraldry(at)meer.net>

To: MDSTMARY(at)rootsweb.com>

Subject: THE ENGLISH ANCESTRY OF MARYLAND THOMAS SPRIGG

Gwen, Thanks for your positive comments and for putting my article on Worldconnect. It is rare to get any positive feedback for my efforts in family history. Sorry, I haven't learned much new since I wrote that. In a sense I tend to lose interest after I find answers and I felt like I found my English roots (as in the article) and left it there.

I did find out that John Sprigg was disclaimed at the herald's visitation of Leicester in 1682 and that was of great interest as that would mean he showed up with a coat of arms and was denied.

If you learn anything new please let me know.

Best regards,

David Armstrong, In the Tygart Valley, Elkins, WV

The following was written in reply to a comment about the information provided in this profile above on another forum> There is quite extensive information given above, some of which may be useful or valuable, but the retraction below should be an important context within which it should be considered....

The full exchange can be found here.

Wow, Christanel - I completely forgot that I posted that all those years ago. Interesting? Not sure. Accurate? Even less sure. I wrote it as an e-mail about ten years ago and at that time I did not know what I was talking about.

SOME CORRECTIONS FOR THE ENGLISH ANCESTRY OF MARYLAND THOMAS SPRIGG

I should not have said this - it is not confirmed:

"The confirmed record of the Sprigg family of Maryland and West Virginia begins with the 1690 will of John Sprigg of Great Bowden, Leicester, which is on the Northamptonshire border."

I should not have said this:

"These connections account for Lt. Col. Thomas Sprigg Jr., son of the immigrant, naming sons Edward Sprigg and Osborn Sprigg"

It turns out that Thomas Junior married the daughter of Edward Mariarte and Edward's wife's maiden name is not known. She could be the Osborn.

I should not have said this:

"Part of this fighting took place in Northamptonshire...... The general population of the shire was overwhelmingly Parliamentarian and it may be that Maryland Thomas left (he being a Cavalier) for that reason."

I have since learned that there was no place in the UK "overwhelmingly Parliamentarian" and that families were split, some people switched sides, in short it reminds me of our American Civil War. I didn't know that when I wrote that.

I should not have said this:

"Some speculations can be made however. He MIGHT be the Thomas Sprigg who was "absent abroad" in the 1649 estate record of John Andrews of London."

I have since eliminated this other Thomas Sprigg, he died on Barbados right after mine got here.

It was raw notes and was not checked with anyone well versed in the UK and the culture. I know better now, to ask first. Not long after I wrote that I dropped genealogy to keep up with 21st century matters. Now I have picked it up again and want to actually learn more about what I thought I knew then. I would love to have anybody with better knowledge of the UK to look at it, critique it, and pick it apart, find flaws, etc.... I joined here to learn. When I wrote that I thought I knew something - but I know better now how much I didn't know then.....

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