It is interesting to know the origin and morale of a family; the religious convictions, the genius, the thrift, the habits, and the crowning motives that actuated them; what they lived for and what they accomplished.

     Our ancestors came to this country in moderate circumstances.  They were (and still are) for the most part, tillers of the soil.  They settled in the great forests of Virginia and Ohio, put up their own log cabins and hewed out their own farms.  They raised the flax, the wool, and the leather and made their own clothes and shoes.  Railroads were not thought of and modern farm machinery unknown; it was difficult to market what they raised by dint of hard toil.
     They were not given to push themselves into public notice,  In political matters they preferred others above themselves, hence few sought official position.  Nevertheless they were  patriotic and loyal to their country, and to their church.  About an equal number fell on either side in the Civil war.  We have no reason to be ashamed of our crowd.
     While the Spaids were not remarkable for clannishness and were anything but mushy in their affection, they had a filial devotion to parents and a kindly feeling for the relatives that was most exemplary.  Each of the eight children that married named a daughter in honor of their mother and six of them named a son George for the father.  The Johns, Freds, Mikes and Williams is almost confusing, as you may see by the index. (which I do not have)  The five Spaid families in Ohio lived in the one community all their lives.  Each had  large families.  Aunt Nancy had the smallest family--six; Mary (Aunt Polly) Hellyer, the largest--twelve; the rest, intermediate numbers.  They lived in perfect harmony all their lives so far as we have ever heard, and we knew all the forty-five grandchildren except those that died young and six of the Hellyer family that went to Indiana and California at an early day.  The three Spaid families that remained in Virginia lived harmoniously together.  The twenty-three grandchildren  in those families, we are convinced, were excellent citizens, filial sons and daughters, pious Christians.  Their descendants, like those in Ohio, have intermarried many times.  By birth  and life's career the Spaids were, and are, of the great middle class; pioneers, builders of  homes, reliable citizens of whom to build a state.
     Who could have foreseen that this German schoolboy filched from his home and parents by the ruthless ruler of a petty state, and transplanted  to the wilderness of America, should marry in his twenty-second year and in a hundred and forty years from that date, be the progenitor of nearly six thousand souls?    We have neither the time nor money to trace the ancestry back in Germany.  We were never told that we are descended from the nobility of Europe.  In all this throng we have never heard of but two being in prison, and those cases were of questionable justice.  Two were in sanitariums; two were mentally deficient; and but two or three suicides.  This is certainly not a bad record, and far above the average.  It may readily be believed that most ancestral trees, like trees in a forest, have some crooked limbs.
     The Spaids are a resolute people.  This above all others we think the tribal mark.  Any matter is carefully considered, even subconsciously, by the mind, and a course of action resolved on.  After that the Old Harry himself ( an old expression for the devil) couldn't change them.  When a Spaid sins it is with his eyes opened and with the full consent of his will; never through weakness.  They make the best of friends, for they are loyal and never waver in friendship.  But once you lose their good opinion of you,  you might as well try to move mountains as to regain it
 

.                         ON EDUCATION
     There can be no question that all these children were taught to speak German, for the father would be considered a fairly well educated man, being a high school boy at the time he was kidnapped from his native land.  The writer's Grandmother, Christina Spaid Dyson, said her parents, Michael and Margaret Spaid, remembered their German as long as they lived, used it in talking to travelers and once in a while to each other when they desired to  make a remark and did not want the children to know  what they were saying, for they did not teach their children the language.  The older children were given what school advantages the frontier afforded, and it must have been fairly good, for Cephas Garvin tells us that his Grandfather (Frederick Spaid) taught in the public schools.  Of course that means he taught in the American language.  But does not imply that he could not talk German at home to his parents.  We are fully persuaded that all nine  children could read and write American and could speak and probably read the German language.
 

            ON RELIGION
     Without a doubt the religious training of George Nicholas Spaid had been Lutheran, so we were surprised at not finding the names of all his children except John and Fred (who were born before 1789), on the baptismal page of the Hebron Lutheran church record.  They are not there.  The families of John and Fred and Christina and Mary Hellyer were in the faith of the Christian church.  The vast majority of their descendants still adhere to that faith, except the Hellyer family, who are mostly Methodists.  The families of Elizabeth and Nancy and Michael and William were Lutherans and nearly all their descendants are of that faith.  The older members always reminded us of Brahmins; serene in their faith, without doubt and almost without emotion.  The matter was settled so far as they were concerned and there was no room for argument.  To quote a Mt. Zion Lutheran, "'Tis as 'tis and can't be no 'tiser."  But as a matter of fact Spaids are found in every denominations.  They are essentially a religious people; free from cant, absolutely without hypocrisy.  He is more likely to pose as irreligious, rather than profess to be too religious.
     Rev. William Keil was pastor of the Hebron Lutheran church on Capon river from 1823 to 1828, and in that time some of those  that had formerly belonged to that parish but migrated to Ohio, must have been back on a visit, or at least sent a letter back telling of the lack of spiritual guidance, for in the latter year he resigned at Hebron and went to the Spaid-Secrest, settlement, where he founded four churches as the years went by, for these people and their descendants. Nor were his labors confined to this settlement alone, for he was a circuit rider and his parish included half a dozen  counties in southwestern Ohio, and he is said to have founded forty churches.  For more than sixty years he lived at Senecaville, and ministered to these people.  He probably baptized, confirmed, married, and buried more Spaids and Secrests than all other ministers of any and all denominations put together.  He died in 1898 in his ninety-second year, but of course in the latter years of his life younger men had charge of the churches he had founded.
     For the first hundred years, after the marriage of George Spaid in 1782  there was only a single divorce; now they have become all too common.  It is to be hoped that our people will realize the danger of this insidious modern evil and revert to the pure family life of our ancestors.

                                         ON AUTHORITY
     From Aunt Nancy Frye (daughter of George Nicholas Spaid)  we got the names of the parents of George Spaid and the brother and sister.  From Cephas Garvin of Virginia, the fact that he was kidnapped from his home, and he had frequently heard  the story told by his grandfather, Uncle Fred (Frederick Spaid, son of George Nicholas Spaid), probably the most intellectual member of the family.  From American history came the story of the carousal and capture at Trenton.  The story of his latter years and his sudden death we had from our venerable grandmother, Christina Spaid Dyson (granddaughter of George Nicholas and daughter of Michael Spaid), who found her grandfather dead, and who was nearly sixteen years old at that time.  The dates are copied from the gravestone at Hopewell.
 

                                        ON  D.A.R.
     There was always a tradition in the family that after the capture of George Nicholas Spaid he did not remain a prisoner of war long but volunteered in the continental army and fought under Washington till the end of the war, then married and settled in western Virginia.  We are sorry not to be able to confirm this tradition, but at the instigation of Uncle Joe Cannon the files at the war department were searched and his name was not found on the roster of soldiers of the Revolution.  Nor could the name be found  in the archives of the state library of Virginia at Richmond.  But his father-in-law John Cale, was a soldier of the Revolutionary war, a member of the Eighth Virginia  Regiment, as has been attested by the searcher in the state library at Richmond, which has a more complete roster of the Virginians in that war than the Federal Government.  Therefore all persons descended from Elizabeth Cale Spaid and George Spaid are entitled to join this patriotic society.  The same holds good of all descendants of her brother, George Cale, who settled near the Spaids in southeastern Ohio.
 

     As we have said, most of the Spaids were tillers of the soil.  But as a matter of fact they are found in every calling.  Especially are they numerous as millmen and miners.  And in all professions we have our full quota.  We venture the remark that the family has furnished more teachers to the schools of America than any other family of like size.  Many times we found that informants forgot to mention that three or four of the family were teaching school.  Then we have a dozen physicians and six dentists; fourteen lawyers, including two ladies; sixteen preachers of diverse denominations.  The vast majority of the Spaid families own their own homes or farms and do not live in rented property.
 

                                            ON NAMES
 The orthography of German names is so different from the English  that we frequently find families changing the spelling of their names.  Prof. Faust says the German spelling of the name of Spaht, with the alphabetic sound of "a"; to American ears that sounded at though spelled  Spaid.  The Great Progenitor must have adopted the new spelling, for we never have seen any old letters or documents in which the German form of the word was used.  Cale was undoubtedly spelled Kale or even Kahl.  In the Hebron Lutheran church record we found three spellings; Sechrist, Secrest, Secrist.  The Ohio family use Secrest; the  Virginia family, Secrist.  It is probable the German spelling was Siegrest.  The family is about equally divided on the spelling of Cline, and Kline.  The latter is the original spelling.  Gottlieb  has been  changed to Godlove, which is the American translation of the  word.  The family has almost invariably adopted the spelling  Frye, instead of Fry;  Fry must have been the German form of the word.  Most of the family have formed  the custom of dropping  the s on Grove(s).  The family are doing the same thing with Grubb(s).  Most of the family adhere to the original spelling of Hellyer, though we have seen the word spelled Hilliard.  We have seen the word Trenor, but it was manifestly a misspelling.  In this book we have used only one selling for family names and have followed the majority, except in the Kline family, which was so evenly divided on the spelling that we endeavored to follow the custom of each family.   In Christian names we endeavored to follow the spelling of the individual, e.g., May, Mae; Catherine, Kathryn.  In cases of manifest misspelling we followed the customary form.
 
 

                                              ON PLACES
     When the Spaids settled in Hampshire county it was a part of Virginia, and remained so till during the Civil war, when the state of West Virginia was struck off.  In speaking of the older Spaids we almost invariably say they were  born in Virginia, but of those born since the war we have tried to be explicit.  Frederick county is still a part of Virginia, and along the Frederick-Hampshire line there are many little post offices and it has been very confusing to know just which county the office is in.  Highview was in Virginia for many years, but lately was moved to a building a few rods away and that transferred it to West Virginia.  When the Spaids migrated to Ohio they settled in Guernsey county, but when Noble county was organized the southern part of Guernsey was attached to that new county (about 1849), and that threw the Frye family and the Mt. Zion Lutheran church and cemetery in Noble county.  We have used the words Guernsey, Pleasant City, Buffalo, Mt. Zion, so many times that it seemed superfluous to add the name of the state Ohio every time.  In all other cases the name of the state is added in giving addresses, but for obvious reasons the street number is always omitted.

                                MULTIPLICITY OF ANCESTORS
   Take pencil and multiply:  You had two parents, four grandparents, etc.  Twice two are four, twice four are eight, etc., and you will find that in the twentieth generation you had 1,048,576 ancestors without counting the intermediate generations; and in the thirtieth generation you had over a thousand millions of ancestors, without counting those between yourself and the thirtieth.  Allowing thirty-three years for a generation, these thirty generations carry you back less than one thousand years. (My aren't we glad we have computers!!!) rp