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

I had been fascinated by the Carncorran Sproule family ever since I first learnt about them from Heather Arnott. We had something in common straight away. Her Carncorran Sproule line had folk who went from County Tyrone to Ohio, and more than that, there was a series of letters between the Ohio folk and their home in Carncorran. This was in the 1800s. I had the same in my line of Sproules, with the Bridgehill Sproules and Robert Sproule of Ohio.

The letters also fascinated me. Sproules in Ireland tended to fall loosely into two groups. There were the educated Sproules, who had children who were farmers, lawyers and doctors. Then there were the craftsmen and  ‘Labourer’ Sproules. These tended to be less well educated, and often could not read or write.

The Carncorran Sproules were definitely in the ‘educated’ group, based on these letters that were written in a time period from the 1840s. Because of this, I believed they ought to belong to one of the families that I was very familiar with in that area – the Grennan Sproules, the Curraghamulkin Sproules or the Golan Sproules. If they were, there ought to be some references in the letters that I would recognise, talk of relatives that I knew well.

Heather was stuck at Robert Sproule of Carncorran, who was born in 1782, and I poured over these Carncorran letters from the 1840s looking for something that would help her.  I was also looking for any mention of other Sproule families that I would recognise.  There were none. Nobody from any of the known families was mentioned as being a relative in any of the letters.

Now, was it possible that this family had originated from a known family, but further back than mid 1700s? According to Heather, the Carncorran Sproules seem to be related to the Castlebane Sproules, and probably to the Carrickadartans Sproules. These townlands are all grouped together in Ardstraw, with Golan Sproul to the west and Drumnabey to the north – this is Golan Sproule country!

Thomas Spreull of Golan lived in Golan Sproul in the first half of the 1700s, and he had land in Drumnabey, part of which eventually became Spamount. I am very familiar with the Golan Sproul/Spamount family line and I know for certain that the Carncorrans are definitely not related to them in the late 1700s or early 1800s. But there must have been other members of this family that we don’t know anything about. What of Thomas Spreull’s brothers? What happened to them?

As a Golan Sproule descendant myself, this piqued my interest in a big way. Could the Carncorran / Castlebane Sproules be descendants of the brothers of Thomas of Golan?

There are no records in existence that will link these families.  I knew this because the link, if it existed at all, would be way back in the early 1700s or before. There was really only one way to find out, and that was by Y-DNA.

Fate, in the form of Joe Sprowl and his Sproule DNA project, stepped in to help.

Note:

The Carncorran Sproules written by Heather Arnott