Spedding's graduation coincided with the onset of the Great Depression, and jobs became hard to find. Spedding received a National Research Fellowship from 1930 to 1932, enabling him to stay at Berkeley and continue his research into the spectra of solids. While hiking in northern California, he met Ethel Annie MacFarlane, who shared his passion for camping, hiking and mountain climbing. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she was a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Toronto, where she had earned a master's degree in history. When they met, she was teaching at Victoria High School in Victoria, British Columbia. They were married on 21 June 1931. They had a daughter, Mary Anne Elizabeth, who was born in 1939.