OP, what is your current earliest record (of a real person, not character) of the spelling “Samantha” or “Samanthe”? I’ve been sifting through familysearch records and most of the earliest ones (1780s - early 19th century) are just from indexes that could have transcribed the wrong name or the right name with the wrong spelling/variant. I’m just curious what your earliest one is that you’ve found.