Part 2 - The Intriguing Carncorran Sproules and their Y-DNA

 In 2019 Joe Sprowl, of the Sproule DNA Project, organised a little Sproule Gathering in Castlederg. Thank you again, Joe.  It was lovely to be there, and to meet with members of  the many Sproule families from roundabout. I even met with one family of Sproules, the Evish Sproules, that I had never heard of!

One of the many special moments of that evening was to meet a gentleman called Jim. Jim was connected to the Carncorran Sproules by marriage, and he had been in contact with Heather Arnott. Jim and I had a great chat, and in the course of this, Jim said that he believed that he could get a DNA sample from a male Carncorran Sproule. To say that I was thrilled about this would have been a gross understatement.

Jim was true to his word, and Joe Sprowl was given the precious sample of Carncorran DNA from a gentleman we’ll call Con. Joe found the funds to have this Con’s Carncorran DNA tested to Big-Y level and after a period of time, we had our results. And boy were they interesting!   

My theory that this might me a much earlier relationship was starting to look spot on! However, this earlier relationship was a different family – not the Golan Sproules.

The Carncorrans carry the R- FGC60970 mutation which means they are, like most of the Tyrone/Donegal Sproules, descendants of the Cowden Sproules of Renfrewshire in Scotland. But the Carncorrans are in a little group of Sproule lines that kept their original Cowden DNA whilst other lines mutated.  The Carncorrans do not carry any of the other known mutations.

The other highly significant thing is that Con from Carncorran and another Sproule Project member, Ben, are extraordinarily close to each other in their DNA.  In terms of relationships their pattern is identical. They are both amazingly closely related to all of the other Irish Sproule Project members, and they have a genetic distance of 0 from each other! This means they are like brothers, even though Ben’s ancestor left Ireland in about 1710 and Con's ancestor stayed - and Con himself was born and reared in Tyrone!

But there is one very subtle, and very telling, difference between Con from Carncorran, and Ben from America. Ben carries the Cornet Andrew mutation, and Con does not.

They are so close, that I believe the distance is likely to be just one generation. Ben’s ancestor and Con’s ancestor were brothers, sons of the same Sproule Father. Son 1 had children who were born with the Cornet Andrew mutation. Son 1 is the ancestor of Ben. Son 2 did not have children with this mutation, and he is the father of the Carncorran Sproules, he is Con’s ancestor.

Ah, I hear you say, what  happened to my Golan Sproule theory? Where has that gone? Well, that’s just it. It hasn’t gone – it’s still very much in play.

Why? Because we haven’t looked at who ‘Father Sproule’ is yet!

The Carncorran Sproules by Heather Arnott

 Part 1 -The Intriguing Carncorran Sproules and their Y-DNA