Britney Spears Family History

Britney Jean Spears was born on December 2nd, 1981 to Jamie and Lynne Spears at McComb in Pike county, Mississippi.  She was the middle child of three, between her elder brother Bryan James and her younger sister Jamie.

From a protected church and family background in Mississippi, Britney started out on her pop music career at the age of sixteen when Jive Records heard her singing tape and signed her to a contract.  Her first hit record Baby One More Time shot to the top of the Billboard charts in January 1999 and her fame was established.

Later on, things did not go so well.  She married and divorced and lost custody of her sons.  Worse was to follow.  In 2008 she was committed to the psychiatric ward at the UCLA Medical Center and the court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father Jamie Spears and his attorney.  By this mechanism the court gave them complete control of her assets.

Although her singing career continued, Britney was not to be released from her conservsatorship until November 2021.  Her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me is an angry account of how she has felt trapped in her life, first by poverty, then by fame, and then by her family.

Early Spears

These Spears have English ancestry and some of Britney’s distant forebears may have been in Barbados and Liberia.  In America they were perhaps first sighted in Virginia, but then more definitely in South Carolina.

South Carolina.  William Spears was born around 1740 in Union county, South Carolina.  He married Rozanne Skissum in 1768 and they had one son William, born in 1773 and a second Joshua, born much later in 1790.

The elder son William left home in 1792, following other pioneers through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky soon after it had been made a state.  William’s mother followed him and neither returned, living and dying in Kentucky.

William the father remained in South Carolina, perhaps for business reasons.  He was said to have sold horses and supplies to the Continental army during the Revolutionary War.  Another son James appears to have stayed with or near his father in South Carolina.  James was given William’s estate when William died in 1830 “where James must pay his brother Joshua $60 if he returns to South Carolina to collect it.”

Spears in Louisiana and Mississippi

Joshua by this time had migrated south to St. Helena parish in Louisiana.  This was where he had married Martha Watson in 1815 and where their son Joshua Jr. was born two years later.

Joshua Sr. died at Kentwood in Tangipahoa parish in 1845 and was buried in the Baptist church cemetery there.  After his death his wife Martha was said to have lived on for another fifty years, dying in Kentucky.

The First Baptist Church.  From the 1840’s onwards, for generations to come, the Spears family would attend the First Baptist Church in Kentwood, Louisiana – whether they lived there or across the stste line at Osyka or McComb in Pike county, Mississippi.  Britney herself sang in the Baptist church choir when she was a child.

This was and is a tightly knit community in what is sometimes called the Bible Belt.  Here conservative evangelical Protestantism has been particularly strong with families closely connected.

Spears and Bridges.  Britney’s parents Jamie and Lynne were in fact third cousins – Lynne’s maiden name was Bridges; while Jamie’s great grandfather Pascal had married a Mary Bridges of the same family line.

The Bridges – like the Spears – had first come to St. Helena parish, Louisiana from South Carolina in the 1810’s.

The Spears Line.  Britney’s own Spears line from Joshua Sr. ran as follows:

• Joshua Spears Jr. (1817-1893), a farmer
• Pascal Spears (1862-1913), the youngest of Joshua’s six sons
• June Bacot Spears (1896-1986), a World War One veteran
• June Austin Spears (1930-2012), by many accounts a brute
• and Jamie Spears (b. 1955), Britney’s father.

June Austin Spears.  June Austin had joined the U. S. Air Force and fought in the Korean War.  Later he was a police officer with the Baton Rouge City Police.

Still, there was perhaps a dark side to him.  Married three times, he had many children to whom he was reportedly abusive.

His first wife Emma, the mother of Jamie, had died in 1966 at the age of thirty-one when she killed herself in front of the grave of her dead baby son Austin.  And June Austin committed his second wife JoAnn into a mental instiution against her will four years later.

Emma’s suicide was cited as a reason that some of the Spears family were so concerned about Britney at the time of her problems in 2008.

Britney’s British Connection

Some of Britney’s talent may have had its roots in wartime Britain.  There her English grandmother was said to have danced the jitterbug at the Royal Opera House in London before falling in love with an American GI.

Her name was Lilian Portell.  Her father George Portell was born in the naval town of Portsmouth, the son of a Maltese immigrant named Edward Portelli.  George joined the British Royal Navy as a seaman when he was in his teens.  He then met and married his wife Lilian in Tottenham, north London in 1923.  Their daughter Lilian was born a year later.

Lilian’s younger sister Joan recalled:

“We came from very humble beginnings, yet we were very happy.  We didn’t have a great deal and we moved around a lot around London.  But what both Lilian and I loved to do was dance and play music.

My father saved up to send us both for dance classes and piano lessons. He really was a wonderful man.  He was kind, gentle and worked very hard.”

The American GI that Lilian met during World War Two was Barney Bridges, Britney’s maternal grandfather.  They married in London in March 1945 and Barney returned with his wartime bride to Louisiana.

Lilian and her younger sister Joan remained in close contact after her marriage.  Joan visited the Bridges and Spears families in Louisiana in 1991.

Britney Spears’ Family Tree

• William Spears (1742-1830) m. Roxanne Scissum (1745-1830) in South Carolina  in 1768
• – William Spears (1773-1838) m. Mary Jasper, died in Kentucky
• – James Spears (b. 1787), died in South Carolina
• – Joshua Spears (1790-1845), died in Louisiana

• Joshua Spears Sr. m. Martha (Patsy) Watson (1795-1898) in Louisiana in 1815
• – Otto Spears (b. 1815)
• – Joshua Spears (1817-1893)
• – John Spears (b. 1821) m. Martha Bardwell
• – Thomas Spears (b. 1822)

• Joshua Spears Jr. m. Bethany McElveen (1819-1898) in 1844
• – Andrew Spears (1845-1935) m. Sara Wall
• – Martha (Mae) Spears (1848-1934) m. Andrew Williams
• – Sarah (Sallie) Spears (1850-1882) m. William Willson
• – William (Tom) Spears (1852-1941) m. Irene Owen
• – Moses Spears (1854-1895) m. Mary Waller
• – Lemuel Spears (1857-1936) m. Georgie Owen
• – John Spears (1860-1930) m. Sherra Edmonson
• – Pascal Spears (1862-1913)

• Pascal Spears m. Mary Bridges (1866-1950) in 1883
• – Mary Spears (b. 1886-1957) m. Charles Raborn
• – Rosaline Spears (1892-1977) m. James McDaniel
• – June Bacot Spears (1896-1986)
• – Samuel Spears (1898-1978) m. Lucille Wansley
• – Pernell Spears (1902-1966) m. Bessie Chandler

• June Bacot Spears m. Nova Mae Gill (1913-1997) in 1928
• – June Austin Spears (1930-2012)
• – James Spears (1934-2019) m. Jenny Sue Kizer

• June Austin Spears m. Emma Forbes (1934-1966 – died by suicide) in 1951; rem. JoAnn Blackwell (1938-2008) in 1967, separated in 1970; and rem. Ruth Vernado nee Ott (1932-2001) in 1971
• – James (Jamie) Spears (b. 1952) with Emma
• – June Austin Spears Jr. (1962-2021) with Emma
• – Leigh Spears (b. 1967) with JoAnn
• – plus a further four children with Ruth