Baptized as August Louis Edward Spannaus on February 13, 1872, Edward grew up in Green Isle Township in Sibley County, Minnesota. His father, Friedrich Spannaus, was born in Grossbruchter, Schwartzburg-Sondershausen, Saxony, in 1833-34. His mother was Karoline Joel, born in 1836. They, with three children, emigrated to the United States in 1866. Friedrich is said to have been a university-trained architect, who designed and built a number of churches in Sibley County. He also did cabinet work, and was the local coffin-maker.

Edward had little formal education -- two or three years in public school, and German Lutheran school -- but he said that his father would teach him arithmetic, geometry, and fine woodworking on evenings around the kitchen table. He said his schooling was limited because he was hired out to other farmers. While still young, a tree fell on him and crushed his chest, which caused pulmonary problems for the rest of his life. In 1903-04 he worked in Stuttgart, Kansas. When he returned to Minnesota, he attended the Moler Barber College in St. Paul, and qualified for a barber's license. After his marriage to Emma Schulenberg in 1905, they moved back to Stuttgart, Kansas. In 1909, again for reasons of health, they moved to Loveland, Colorado, where Ed established a barber shop. In 1917 the family moved to a farm at Ewell, near Johnstown, Colorado, and then in 1920, moved permanently to Woodland, California. There, Ed built the house that the family lived in until Emma fell and broke her hip at age 101, and could no longer live alone.

In Woodland, Ed worked as a carpenter, and he also built a large chicken house and raised chickens to sell commercially. In Woodland, he was a member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church. He suffered from poor health in the later years of his life, and died in 1956, at the age of 84.