My Genealogy Hound

Norman C. Spalding was born in Plainfield, N. H., March 20, 1831, and is the son of Charles C. and Sophia (Willard) Spalding, natives of Plainfield, N. H. The father died at the age of forty-five, and when Norman was but seven years of age. He was a farmer. The mother died in Lake County, Ohio, in 1882, and was seventy-eight years of age at that time. The family moved to Lake County, Ohio, when our subject was five years of age, and there passed the remainder of their lives. Of their five children, two now living, Norman was the second. He was educated in the schools of Lake County, Ohio, and at South Madison Seminary. At the age of sixteen he left home, went to Buckhorn Furnace, Lawrence Co., Ohio, engaged as salesman, and there he remained for the next twelve years, being in the meantime raised to the position of assistant manager and bookkeeper. In 1860 he came to Franklin County, Mo., and afterward went to Pike’s Peak on a mining expedition, but returned the same year and built the Robertsville grist and saw mills, which he operated for four years, and then set up a store on the farm of James Johnson, in partnership with Edward J. Roberts. He continued at this for five years, after which he went to his farm, for which he had traded his mill, and after remaining there one year returned to the store on Johnson’s farm, this time by himself, but at the end of four years again returned to the farm. Four years later he formed a partnership with S. C. Frary in a general store, where they continued nearly ten years, after which Mr. Spalding engaged in the same line of business with Henry Bruno. In 1865 he married Miss Ann Persiuger, a native of Botetourt County, Va., born in 1839, and to them were born seven children, all living, four sons and three daughters. He is a Democrat and a member of the Masonic fraternity.