If you listen to any Spence stories or look at any Spence documents (see Spence Pedigree Chart), there are 3 things that stick out after a while:
1) The Spences and Rectors intermarry A LOT
2) There are a lot of Reuben Spences and Reuben Rectors
3) There are a lot of George Francis Spences and George Francis Rectors
I can hear Aunt Anna talk over and over about "Fred Rector, Fred Rector, Fred Rector." The man was never Fred. He was always Fred Rector. Less often, there was Jim Rector, his brother. Fred Rector moved to Australia. Somebody there corresponded with my grandmother Bessie, and we got thin blue airmail postmarked Tasmania with kiwi stamps. My mother visited his children, Carl and Betty.
It turns out that Fred and Jim Rector grew up on Aberdeen St., Springhill, affectionately known as Spence's Island because almost everyone there was a Spence. They moved from next door to Uncle Sam and Aunt Mary Ann, to living with them, to Aunt Anna's parents, and on and on. Why? Who were they?
I could find their widowed father James, but it took a lot more sleuthing to place them and their brother Samuel Robert (two more very common family names) as the motherless children of Hannah Merriam Spence Rector, who died at the tragic age of 28. Hannah's brothers were the Spences who lived up and down Aberdeen Street.
Nellie Spence Oliveto That was only one example of the seemingly endless supply of Rectors who lived around Parrsboro and elsewhere in Cumberland County. Not only Hannah, but 4 out of 7 Spence siblings married Rectors. One of Hannah's brothers was Reuben Spence, and another was named George Francis. After he died, George Francis's widow, Angeline Rector, married our forefather John W. Spence, himself a widower. Not surprisingly, Hannah's parents were Samuel Spence and Ellenor Rector.
If you can read the bad handwriting, you can see that Ellnar Spence, widow of Sam., died in River Hebert on Oct. 28, 1910 of pneumonia with a main diagnosis of senility (not dementia, just old age). She was 90 and born in Lakeland, so that means that she and her Rector parents were in Cumberland County in 1820.
If you're a Rector, you have to name your sons Samuel, Robert, Reuben, and George Francis. If you're a female, and your name changes when you marry, your Roberts and George Francises have different surnames. There are so many Samuels, Roberts, and Reubens Anythings that they have to distinguish themselves by their middle names. What did the George Francises do? I don't know, use their birth date, birth place, occupation, parents' names? That was all the same too!
I decided to search through the records for every Rector family and match them to their parents. Since that included Rector women who married, it was like untangling five 20-inch necklaces that you find lodged between your grandmother's dresser and the wall. It appeared that every Rector had 7 sons, and each son had 7 sons. The upside was that if I found a Reuben or George Francis anywhere, I knew they belonged to the pile. If the Rector wasn't their father, then boom! I knew their mother's maiden name!
Another indicator was Dutch. The only people of Dutch descent anywhere in Nova Scotia were Rectors. So if a found a Dutch person, I put them in the pile too.
Miss Sisson put this tidbit on Ancestry in 2013:
Reuben Rector was one of the first settlers in South Brook. Reuben's father was believed to be from Holland and he settled in the Parrsboro area when he came to Canada. Reuben married a woman by the name of Margaret Tipping. This marriage caused quite an uproar among the Rectors as they felt that the Tippings were not quite up to the Rector social standards. Reuben was born around 1814 or 1815 and Margaret was born around 1821. Reuben was said to have been a short, stout man with quite a temper. It was told to Curtis O. Brown that Reuben was supposed to have been the "ugliest,meanest, bad-tempered man that God ever gave breath to." Reuben spent his last days with his daughter and son-in-law, Emily and Albert Brown of South Brook. It was here that he died and was buried in the Brown Cemetery, although no marker remains at his grave site. Leonard Brown claimed that Reuben was buried by the camp where they lived. This was in the woods back of the now David Lavers property.
also
Reuben Rector was the second settler to come to South Brook. He built his house out of logs over the other side of Dan Lovely's barn. The cellar of this house is still to be there (sic)
Information provided by a family member
A clear pattern started to appear when our girl Ellenor said in 1891 that her father was born in The Netherlands. The only other person in all Nova Scotia with a father born there was Reuben Rector, 3 years older than Ellenor. Was he her brother?
I realized that a fortunate point about the Rectors is that, many as there are, they are all related. It's not a common name. So any Rector in 1800 was really close to the first immigrant. Any Rector in 1800 was an immediate family of any other one. I started a collection of Rectors born in Nova Scotia early on:
Robert in 1795,
George F. in 1801,
Thomas in 1803,
James in 1810,
Reuben in 1817,
Ellenor in 1820.
Robert, who lived to be over 96 years old, had the most info collected by his 10 kids. Were they all brothers? Cousins? Could Reuben and Ellenor be the children, not of the First Immigrant, but of Robert or George F?
And then I hit the jackpot!
Stay tuned!
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