About 1820–1860s · Sam and Hennie
Samuel “Sam” Spicer and Henrietta “Hennie” Moore were born around 1820. Their family’s beginnings are associated with Meekins Neck and the Lakes District of Dorchester County. Sam’s Indigenous ancestry is remembered in family oral history; a specific tribal affiliation has not been established.
Hennie and several children appear in the family’s account of Robert Bell’s enslaved household. Sam’s absence from that particular entry does not settle his status. Their children’s names appear with variations across the surviving family record.
1870–1880s · Households and family ties
Sam and Hennie’s household can be followed in the Lakes District in 1870 and 1880. Their children included Hannah, Rachel, John, Thomas, Harriett, Griffin, Levin, Jack, and Fortune Abraham.
Hannah married Isaac Y. Ennalls in 1875. Harriett married William James Bowley in 1876. These marriages connected the Spicers with families whose stories became intertwined with the life of Lina’s Road.
1890–1918 · Marriage and shared care
Grief Spicer married Rachel Travers, daughter of Major Washington Travers and Elizabeth Cornish. After Rachel died in 1899, relatives helped care for their children. Harvey and Oneta stayed with their Travers grandparents; Cora with Eliza Travers Phillips and Josiah Phillips; and Hilbert with Julie and Lincoln Stafford.
Julie Spicer Ennalls and Lincoln Little Stafford married at John Wesley Church in 1891. Dorothy Ann Ennalls married David Abraham McCready there in 1901. In 1918, Cora Irene Spicer married Charles Winfield Payton, connecting the Spicer and Travers lines with the Phillips, McNamara, and Payton families.
1910–1960 · Farms, water, industry, and land
Grief worked as an oysterman. Julie and Lincoln Stafford owned a farm on Lina’s Road in 1910. Later generations found work in Baltimore’s shipyards and steel industry, in teaching, and in military service, while maintaining family ties to Dorchester County.
In 1960, Thomas T. Spicer conveyed approximately four acres opposite John Wesley Church to its trustees. That transaction connects the family’s story directly to land held for a community institution.
Today · A continuing inheritance
The Spicer legacy lives through descendants, gatherings, photographs, and the care of the church, school, and burial ground. The family’s history continues alongside the related Travers, Phillips, Bowley, Ennalls, Stafford, Keene, and Payton lines.