My father, Carl Heinrich Spohr, Doctor of Medecine, afterwards Medical Councillor, was the son of a Clergyman at Woltershausen in the district of Hildesheim. He married, November 26, 1782, Ernestine Henke, daughter of the Clergyman of the Aegydian church of Brunswick, and at first resided with her parents at the parsonage. I was the eldest child of this marriage, and was born April 5, 1784. Two years later, my father was transferred as district physician to Seesen. My earliest recollections reach back to that removal; for the impression made upon me by my mother's weeping, after having, taken leave of her parents, and our arrival at the simple and somewhat rustic house at Seesen, have remained with me up to the present time. I remember also the smell of the newly whitewashed walls striking me as disagreeable, and even now I still retain an uncommon acuteness and sensibility of the senses.

In Seesen were born my four brothers, and one sister. My parents were musical: my father played the flute, and my mother, a pupil of the Conductor Schwaneberger in Brunswick, played on the piano with great ability, and sang the Italian bravuras of that time. As they practiced music very often in the evening, a sense and love for the art was early awakened in me.