While our surname is not SPENCE, I suspect that a SPENCE was 'our' last slave owner. My GGF's sister was named Margaret SPENCE.

There is a migration path from Virginia to Alabama to Arkansas for some of these SPENCEs as well as my paternal line. My GGF was born in Talladega County, Alabama, and there were SPENCEs there too. GGF "grew up" in Arkansas, and the suspect owner is Dudley SPENCE, in the same county as GGpa in 1870, Clark County, Arkansas. My grandfather was born/died there, my father and his sister also lived there all their lives (siblings moved away). My aunt passed away in 2000, the last of that generation.

In the 1870 census, GGpa indicates that his father was born in Virginia, mother in Kentucky.