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(contributed by Nan Spedding)
Francis Spedding
Francis Spedding was born 4 November 1818 in Gilling West, North Yorkshire, to Francis Spedding, brewer, and his wife Mary Sayer. He was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1839 and gained his B.A. in 1843. He was ordained at Durham and was curate at Winston, Durham at the time of his marriage in 1846 to Isabella Mansfield.
Their six children were James, born in Flimby in 1847 and Francis 1848, Henry 1850, Marion 1856, Charles 1857 and Isabella 1861, all born in Shifnal, Shropshire, where their father was curate from 1850 to 1865. Only Francis, Marion and Charles survived infancy.
He then became Vicar at Donisthorpe, Derbyshire from 1865 till his death in 1884. It is believed that his wife Isabella Spedding died in the USA in about 1871, probably on a visit to family living there. Francis died at the Vicarage of cerebral congestion aged 66.
In his Will he asked to be buried in Gilling, but no doubt to it being winter, he was buried in the New Cmetery in Donisthorpe. Today, Donisthorpe is in Leicestershire.
Frank Sayer Spedding
The eldest surviving son of the Rev. Francis Spedding and his wife Isabella Mansfield was born in Shifnal, Shropshire 6 August 1848. In 1876 he sailed from Liverpool on the "Algeria" for New York, aged 28. He was an artist and illustrator, and his whereabouts in the U.S.A. can be traced through the U.S.Census. In 1880 he was living with his uncle Sayer Spedding, his father's brother and a brewer by trade, in German Flatts, Herkimer, New York. In 1900 Frank was a boarder and artist in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1910 he was an artist in Los Angeles, California and in 1920 he had an artists' studio and framing shop in Los Angeles where he died 4th February 1924 aged 72. He does not appear to have married and only one of his works have been traced - a sketch of Alfred, Lord Tennyson which appears in the book "Doffs His Cap" by Richard le Galliene. He is also mentioned in early California catalogues of artists and illustrators.
Charles Spedding
Charles Spedding, the second son of the Rev. Francis Spedding and his wife Isabella Mansfield was born 16 November 1857 in Shifnal, Shropshire. His education is unknown and he left England for India in 1885, the year after his father died, when he was 28 years old. In 1891 he founded Spedding and Co., Civil Engineers and in the same year he became involved in the northern India Hunza-Nagar Expedition with the local rank of Captain. This involved a contract from the British Army to build a military road from Gilgit to Hunza and beyond for the defence of the Hindu Kush from the Hunza-Nagaris, a tribe who terrorized the locals by taking prisoners during raids and selling them as slaves. Under very difficult conditions Charles and his sappers built a mule track, protected by his personal army of Pathans. Queen Victoria subsequently awarded Charles the India Medal of 1854 with the Hunza clasp of 1891, a very rare medal. In 1896 his kinsman, the Rt. Hon. Sir Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn, later the 5th Lord Headley, joined Spedding and Co. as an assistant engineer when the company was constructing the Baramula-Srinagar Road through the mountains, 33 miles long and involving 167 coverts and bridges.
In 1897 Charles left India due to illness and met Bessy Phillips, his future wife, in a hospital in Paris where she nursed him and put up with his swearing in Hindustani. They retired to England and bought Cary Castle in St. Mary Church, Devon, where their only child Frank Spedding was born in 1901.
In 1902 Charles returned to India but in 1904 Spedding and Co. was wound down and he finally left India in 1905 with a huge company pension. When a relative casually mentioned taxes, Charles is said to have replied, "What is income tax?" Shortly afterwards, the family left for the Continent and the life of wealthy tax exiles, living in hotels on the French Riviera. He never recovered his health and used a small covered carriage and pony to get about. They eventually moved to the Channel Islands and lived at Holly Lodge, St. Saviour, Jersey and where he died 9 December 1925.
He was always known in the family as "the Famous Engineer" and his exploits in India were told in the book, "Where Three Empires Meet" by E.F. Knight, his first cousin, written in 1895
Parents:
James H E D Mansfield and Henrietta Knight
Siblings of Isabella
Marion Dalrymple Mansfield
Ellanora Henrietta Horn Mansfield (married Charles Burr)
Children:
James Mansfield Spedding
Frank Sayer Spedding
Henry Elphinstone Spedding
Marion Christina Spedding (married George Fennell Richardson)
Charles Spedding (married Bessie Phillips)
Isabella Mansfield Spedding
Featured Pages
Charles Spedding Letter
Mansfield Spedding Biographies
Charles Spedding
photograph taken in India