Madeline "Maddy" Spafford Petrocokino was born on January 21, 1904, in New York City, and passed away on June 21, 1990, in South Normanton, Derbyshire, England, at the age of 86. She is buried in the Spafford family plot at Saint Matthew's Episcopal Churchyard, Bedford Center, Westchester County, New York.
Madeline was one of three children born to Emily Hazard Dakin and Joseph Henry Spafford, Esq., a lawyer in New York City. The family maintained a country estate, "Oak Knoll," in Bedford Hills, Westchester County. Her older brother, Kenneth Spafford, died at ten days old, and her older sister, Katherine Spafford, died at eighteen from illness, leaving Madeline and her sister Ruth as the surviving siblings.
The Spafford family line traces back to Northumbria in the 1100s, with settlers arriving in Connecticut Colony in the 1600s, and includes landed and titled gentry from Oxfordshire, England, dating to the 1400s. On her mother's side, the Dakin-Hazard line settled in Rhode Island Bay Colony in the early 1600s as part of the Puritan Migration, with roots traceable to 14th-century England.
Madeline's sister Ruth attended Vassar College. Where Madeline herself received her higher education remains unknown. At some point in the early 1930s — likely at a house party in New York — Madeline attended a sermon by Frank Buchman, which proved to be a turning point in her life. She subsequently began travelling across the United States with Mr. Buchman, serving as his secretary and living out her Christian faith through the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement.
It was on one of these trips, in Seattle, that she met Paul Petrocokino. They married on August 26, 1947, at the MRA centre on Mackinac Island, Michigan, when Madeline was 43. Paul was six years her junior — Oxford-educated, an accomplished pianist, and the son of the daughter of an English Baronet and a Greek aristocrat and businessman. They never had children.
From that time onward, Madeline and Paul were based in England, though Madeline travelled extensively. In 1977, they spent a year in Tucson, Arizona, for the sake of Paul's health, where they enjoyed birdwatching. Later, they settled at the MRA centre at Tirley Garth, Cheshire, England, where they lived until Madeline's death.
Madeline appears to have dedicated much of her life to her faith, perhaps never expecting to marry. Her life was one of quiet devotion, travel, and service — a life shaped equally by her distinguished family heritage and her deeply held Christian convictions.
Jessica Leon, Maddy's great niece, adds a personal recollection: "In 1982, at the age of sixteen, I visited Madeline and Paul at the MRA centre at Tirley Garth, accompanied by my mother Josephine and my youngest sister Josie. We stayed for two weeks in the carriage house on the grounds, attending MRA talks and meals — and five years earlier, in 1977, our family had visited them in Tucson, Arizona, where they enjoyed the birding and I saw my first road-runner."
