What a difference 7 years makes. This record wasn’t there in the Church Records of Jamaica on Familysearch.org when I was researching Jamaica in 2012/2013. Now I was looking again in 2020, and here it was. The mystery of Mary Anne Schouberg, for that is the spelling in Jamaica, was solved. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the solution not only solved the mystery but it also generated a lot of questions, and this time they were really, really, challenging.
The questions all centred round the
mysterious and intriguing Robert Sproule of Jamaica. Indeed, was there 'a' Robert Sproule of Jamaica, just one, or were there two Robert
Sproules of Jamaica? Or were there two Robert Sproules, but only one Robert Sproule was real and the
other Robert Sproule was an imposter? And if the second Robert Sproule was an imposter – who was he?
Those were the kind of questions I was facing, definitely challenging. It took a lot to sort this out, with detective
work, timelines and a ‘murder wall’ –
the whole scene!
But first I have to build the story up for you. This Robert Sproule in Jamaica lived in the parish of St George. We know who he is. He is another Tullymoan Sproule, the son of Robert Sproule who was born on the Tullymoan farm some time round the 1770s. Robert, the father, was a brother of James Sproule of Stokes Hall, Jamaica, and later Mellmount.
Robert Sproule the father was, I believe, a businessman rather than a
farmer, and our Robert Sproule of St George appears to have followed in his
father’s footsteps. We gather this from an investigation of his history in
Jamaica.
 |
| Parishes in Jamaica in the early 1800s |
Robert first appears in the parish of St. George on the 28th Jun 1829, when he registered himself as an owner of one slave. The parish of St George is to the north west of St Thomas in the East, where his uncle James Sproule was living in his plantation at Stokes Hall.
 |
| Robert in St George, 1832, from Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834 Ancestry.com |
In 1832, Robert again registered slaves, but only 3.[1] This immediately tells us that Robert is not a planter like his uncle James – he’s not a plantation manager or owner. He could possibly, then, be an agent or a merchant of some kind.
We never find out for
certain where exactly in St George Robert Sproule is living – no town or
plantation is every mentioned, with one exception. This was in 1838, when,
according to the Jamaican Almanac of that year, Robert Sproule registered the
plantation of Orange Vale, St George, with 124 apprentices.[2] ‘Apprentices’ were
former slaves, set free in the emancipation in 1834. This year of 1838 is the only year that
Robert is associated with this plantation in the records, and if we look at the history of
Orange Vale, we get a hint as to what business Robert is in.
 |
| From Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery |
This Orange Vale plantation was registered by managers from 1823 to 1826. 'Managers' would have actually run the plantation and occasionally register it when the owner was off-island. After this it was registered by an agent, who was an attorney, one George McLeish, until the end of slavery. Now the agent wouldn’t have actually run the plantation, that would still be the manager, the agent represented the Owner's interests. Occasionally, the agent may have lived there. I think it is very likely that Robert Sproule was in the same company as George McLeish and that they were agents and attorneys. He only registered Orange Vale himself for this one year.
We also know that
Robert Sproule registered for the militia and that he was also later a
magistrate in St. George.
I had discovered all
of this in early 2013 and that was when I received a rather astounding email
from a gentleman in Australia. This email seemed to concern this same Robert
Sproule. The Australian gentleman had seen my blog, which at that time had mentioned
Jamaica, but not yet the story of James Sproule of Mellmount.
He said that his ancestor, a Jane Thomas Sproule, was married in Melbourne in 1855. Jane Thomas Sproule was married;
"…at the house of Mr Sproule, according to the ceremonies of the church of Scotland. Jane stayed in Australia & had at least 5 children including Charles Mansfield, in 1864. I don't know if Jane's mother (Mary Ann Thomas) ever came to Australia. Jane's father, is identified as a Planter from Jamaica – Robert Sproule.”
I remember my first reaction to this – it can’t be true. Robert Sproule, a Planter from Jamaica, was in Australia in 1855? Nobody could go all that way from Jamaica to Melbourne and then back to Jamaica again, especially in those days. Could he really have done that, could Robert Sproule have gone from Jamaica to Australia? Why on earth would he do that?
“I have a Victorian marriage cert. from 1855 which is for Jane Thomas Sproule (who must have been about age 20), marrying James Ward. Her father is identified as Robert Sproule, PLANTER, from Jamaica. Her mother, Mary Ann Thomas. I also have a birth cert. for Charles Mansfield Ward, 1864, born to Jane Sproule ( birthplace, Jamaica, West Indies) age 29, & James Ward.”
Now that all sounded very legitimate and it was enough detail for me to do some checking in Jamaica. My informant did not know, as I hadn’t yet published the story, that I was by now very familiar with these Sproules and their relationships with slave ladies in Jamaica. There was a strong possibility that Jane Thomas Sproule, the daughter who was born about 1835, was not the daughter of Robert Sproule’s wife, Mary Ann Thomas, but was the child of some slave lady.
I went hunting first
for a child named Jane born to any
Robert Sproule in Jamaica. I looked in the Familysearch.org where there is a super collection in the Jamaica Church of England Parish Register
Transcripts - these contains baptisms. This
database would also include slave baptisms. There was no child baptised named Jane Sproule daugher of a Robert Sproule - absolutely none.
I had already found one child born to a Robert Sproule in that same database, and even after a search at that time, I could find no more.* This was the baptism of the son of our Robert Sproule. He was also called Robert Sproule, and he was born on 20 Nov 1842 in Orange Vale. His father was named as Robert Sproule, and his mother was, Mary Ann, wife of Robert Sproule.
 |
| The baptism of the son of Robert Sproule, Jamaica Births and Baptisms, 1752-1920, Familysearch.org |
This is definitely our Robert Sproule and he seems to be actually living in Orange Vale at that time. This son later became Robert Sproule of Mulvin. It is also notable that Robert describes himself here in this birth record as a ‘Planter’, just as the Robert Sproule in Australia did.
No sign of a
daughter of Robert Sproule named Jane Thomas Sproule. I checked the will of our
Robert Sproule written after he returned to Ireland, dated 27th of June 1860, to see if he mentioned a daughter Jane – there was no Jane there at
all.[3]
Now I went to search the slave records on Ancestry.
There was only one
Jane Sproule registered as a slave in the whole of Jamaica, and she is Jane, the daughter of James
Sproule of Stokes Hall. No other Jane Sproul is registered as a slave.
 |
| From - Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834, Ancestry.com |
Of course, if Jane Thomas Sproule was born in 1835, as the informant said, she would not have been born a slave, as this was after emancipation.
At this point I
went back to my Australian gentleman telling him that I could not find Jane
Thomas Sproule, but that Robert Sproule appeared to be the only planter in
Jamaica. I also said that in my view the liklihood was that Jane Thomas Sproule was almost
certainly the child of a former slave and that Mary Ann Thomas, his wife,
was unlikely to have been her mother.
And that’s where I left it in 2013.
But Mary Ann Thomas
wasn’t the wife of Robert Sproule at all, was she? No, she wasn’t. For in May 2020, when I went back to the Jamaican records, I found out that the wife of
Robert Sproule of Jamaica and later of Mulvin was none other than our aforementioned Mary Ann Schouberg.
"Robert Sproule and Mary Ann Schouberg, both of this Parish, were married by Licence on the 18th day of June in the year 1836" [4]
Robert Sproule of Jamaica and Mulvin had married Mary Ann Schouberg - not Mary Ann Thomas. Robert and Mary Ann Schouberg had one child in Jamaica, and they had a further 6 children in Ireland. These children were baptised in the 1st Strabane Presbyterian Church. Robert mentions only 3 children in his will of 1862 - Robert, Andrew S. and Margaret Matilda. Andrew S. is Andrew Schouberg Sproule.
Now you see the questions that we have. Who was that lady who got married in Melbourne, Australia, in 1855, the Jane Thomas Sproule? Who was the man who said he was her father, Robert Sproule, Planter, from Jamaica? Could he be our Robert Sproule of Jamaica? What if he wasn't?
What we really need now is more evidence. We need to find Jane Thomas Sproule in Jamaica. If she is anywhere near our Robert Sproule, that will tell us a lot. If not...
Next Post
Previous Posts in this Story
References:
[1] Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834 Ancestry.com https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1129/
[2] 1838 Jamaica Almanac in Jamaican Family Jamaican Family Search Genealogy Research Library http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/AL38Geor.htm
[3] The will of Robert Sproule of Mulvin, formerly Jamaica is in PRONI Will Calendars
[4] Jamaica Births and Baptisms, 1752-1920, Familysearch.org
The map of the parishes above is from https://goodnewsjamaica.com/2019/09/13/the-history-of-the-jamaican-parishes/
* There actually is one other Robert Sproule there in St Thomas in the East, with a wife Ann. He is not relevant to this story. I'll address this Robert in a later post.
No comments:
Post a Comment