Armour Curry Lowery Sproule

I came across this extraordinary name in about 2013, not long after  I began researching on Ancestry. There it was on a couple of Sproule Family trees. It was a ridiculous name, Armour Curry Lowery Sproule. It was too ridiculous to be true. Over the years I have dipped in and out of this story, hoping to bring a definite conclusion to the mystery of the Armour Sproule name. I haven’t quite got there yet, but now I feel it is time to give you what we know so far… and what I suspect!

Armour Sproule - Did he exist? Was he real?

By about 2014, I began to ask, could there really have been an Armour Sproule? Did he exist at all? Although Armour isn’t a Sproule name, it was a name of those times, that is, the late 1700s. I began to look at those Ancestry family trees, and I also had a search round the records, and it quickly became very clear that the name Armour Sproule did indeed exist.

The earliest document that I found was an immigration entry into New York in 1816, for one ‘Armour Spraule’, who was the 'primary passenger'. This looks like the family of an Armour Sproule had entered the US in 1816, we assume from Ireland.

1816 Arrival in New York
Name: Armour Spraule
Arrival Year: 1816
Arrival Place: New York, New York
Source Publication Code: 1742
Primary Immigrant: Spraule, Armour
U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s Ancestry.com

 We then have the Armour name occurring in a family in Prescott, Ontario. This is the family of a John Sproule who married a Mary Ann Barton, and they called their first born, Armour Sproule. The two married on 3 Nov 1840 in Middlesex, Ontario, and interestingly, two Blayney boys are witnesses at that wedding.

The wedding of John Sproule and Mary Ann Barton, Ontario, Canada, Marriages, 1826-1938

So we know that Armour and his family arrived in the US in 1816, and almost certainly went on to Prescott, Ontario.  But were did Armour live before he left home?

Where was Armour Sproule from?

The answer to this was revealed in the Dromore Presbyterian Church records in PRONI, for these records led me  to the townland where Armour Spoule and his family had lived.

In about 2015 I visited PRONI and recorded some records from the Dromore church. First there is the marriage on the 2nd February 1838, of a James Sproule who we learn is the son of Armour Sproule and Ann Sproule alias Given. James married Anne Blayney daughter of Ambrose Blayney and Elizabeth Blayney alias Smith of Dullaghan, Parish of Dromore. (Dromore Presbyterian Church records, PRONI)

The place where James and Armour Sproule lived is not there on the Church marriage record, but we find it on the birth records of the couple's children in the same church.  Ann Blayney and James Sproule lived in the townland of Mullaghabane, Dromore,  County Tyrone, and they had had 3 children baptised Sarah, Elizabeth and Charles. So Armour Sproule and his wife Ann Given were resident  in Mullaghabane.

Now we have established that there was indeed an Armour Sproule and that he lived in Mullaghane. We know that he left Ireland in 1816 and that he had at least two sons. His son John probably left Ireland with the father and mother and went to live in Prescott Ontario.  If we look at the 1851 Census in Prescott at the family of John and his wife Mary Ann, we see that there is a visitor, Ann Sproule, and that she is aged 68. This is very likely to be his mother Ann Given. 

Visitor Ann Sproul with John Sproul in 1851 Census Canada East, Ancestry.com

The other son James Sproule, who married Ann Blayney had stayed in Mullaghabane, and James died there in 1842.

Could he REALLY have had that name?

What about all the other names this Armour Sproule of Mullaghabane is supposed to have? The whole 'Armour Curry Lowery', thing?  

So far I had found no trace of a document showing anything other than the name 'Armour'. No sign at all of all of the rest of this elaborate name. It doesn’t take a genius to look at this name and to make the connection between this name and the name of  a very important person at that time, a peer of the realm, no less. Hold that thought, more to follow. But first, was this name real?

In 2017, I was sent a document by a gentleman named David Walters, a very important document. I am very grateful to David for sending it to me.  The document was a typewritten page, a transcription of a letter that had been written to Mrs Hugh Keys, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia, and it was sending her the family history! Mrs Hugh Keys was Sarah Sproule, born 18 Nov 1838, daughter of James Sproule of Mullaghabane and Ann Blayney, and granddaughter of Armour Sproule.

This letter with her family history was sent to Sarah Sproule in Australia in about 1900 and it had two different names as 'sender', the Rev Edwards and Charles Cooper in Ireland.

The family history begins:

And there we have it. There is the name Armour Curry Lowery Sproule, in a document was written about 1900. Quite amazing. Who were the writers of this letter? Did they have any knowledge of this family? Or maybe they just composed this elaborate name?

Charles Cooper, one of the writers, is the brother-in-law of the recipient of the letter, Sarah Sproule. Charles Cooper was married to Elizabeth Sproule, her sister.

But it is the Rev Edwards who caught my eye, and it is he who is particularly interesting. First of all, he was a Reverend, and they tend to know family things. But also, he is related to this family, as it happens doubly so! 

There is only one Rev. Edwards that I know of in this neighbourhood, and I checked again this week with local folk to make sure. There was only definitely only one Rev. Edwards in the area, but he was not alive in 1900 when this letter was sent. Rev. Edward Edwards had died in 1881. He was one of the Edwards of Kilcroagh and Castle Gore, born in 1802, the son of Nehemiah Edwards and Elizabeth Sproule.

Edward Edwards is related to both Armour Sproule and to his wife, Ann Given. He is distantly related to Armour through his mother, Elizabeth Sproule and he is the second cousin of Ann Given through his father, for she was also from this Edwards family.

What makes me doubly certain that Rev. Edward Edwards who died in 1881 actually wrote this family history, and passed it on to the Mullaghabane family, is that there is information in the letter that only he could possibly have known. More on that in a later post.

The Rev. Edward Edwards should certainly know the full name of Armour Sproule. 

That would lead us to believe most, if not all, of what is contained in this letter to Mrs Hugh Keys. This letter written in 1900 says this man's name is Armour Curry Lowry Belmore Sproule.

It also says that John Sproule is the father of Armour Curry Lowery Belmore Sproule. John Sproule of Grennan, that is.

That leaves us with the BIG question. 

Why in god’s name would John Sproule of Grennan call his son Armour Curry Lowery Sproule???

If his father was John Sproule of Grennan, why would he possibly give is son that name? But before we can even consider the BIG question, we need to look at two more players in this story...