According to Audrey Mae’s artistic cemetery map diagram and Audrey Mae’s gravestone numbering system, Walter’s gravestone is Gravestone Number Thirty-Seven. Using her Smith-Corona typewriter in the 1980s, Audrey Mae typed the following mini-biography of Walter Spencer and his siblings, seventh-generation Spencers in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

(2013 Update: More research is needed. Audrey Mae has Walter’s date of death as 6-19-1907 and Bruce MacGunnigle’s book has 6-18-1857, but the gravestone inscription clearly has 6-18-188_.  Anyone who has done this work knows how painstaking difficult and tedious this work is.  It is almost impossible to be correct 100% of the time. More research is needed.)

Walter born in 1854 is the son of John Anthony (gravestone No. 32) and Jamima Maxim (gravestone No. 31) Spencer.

Bruce MacGunnigle – 43

John Anthony is the son of Captain John (gravestone No. 4) and Phebe (née Vaughn) Spencer.  Captain John is the first son of Huldah (gravestone No. 1) and Patriot John (No. 2) Spencer.

Of the six children of John Anthony and Jamima in this graveyard, Walter is the only one of the six children to live beyond age 19.  Walter, being too young at the time of the Civil War, escaped that possible death sentence. According to Audrey Mae, he lived to be age 53, but more research is needed because of the discrepancy with different dates of death.  Still he died at a younger age than his parents, his grandparents, his great grandparents. Continue reading →