Joseph Sproule and his wife Mary Ann Boggs lived in Inishcoo House on the island of Inniscoo from the year 1799. (Both spellings are used - Inniscoo is the older one) Elder, on the family tree of the Sproules of Upper Grennan, tells us that they had a daughter Mary Ann and that there were other children. This family themselves recorded the names of 4 children of Joseph Sproule of the Rosses and Mary Ann Boggs;
- Mary Ann
- Martha
- Katherine
- Oliver
The family tree document, sent to me by Sue Gress says that the son, Oliver, was
unmarried, and I think he must have died young, as he did not inherit his
father’s house. The Inniscoo house went to the daughter of Joseph Sproule, Mary
Ann Sproule.
Mary Ann married her first cousin, Charles Sproule of
Crillan. He was the eldest son of George Sproule of Crillan and Martha Sproule
of Curraghamulkin - and that makes an awful lot of Sproules in these 3 generations!
This family tree document of Sue Gress gives us some lovely
dates that we would not have access to elsewhere. It tells us first that George
Sproule of Crillan was born on 2 March 1790, which is the same date as that
given by Fred Sproule, a descendant in the same family.[1] We learn also that Mary Ann, daughter of
Joseph Sproule of Inniscoo, was born on 22 March 1801 in Inniscoo. All of these dates fit with what we know of this
family.
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| Inishcoo House about 1900, it is in the centre of the pic |
The only place where I would differ from this family tree document
is in the timeline of Charles Sproule and Mary Ann taking up residence in
Inniscoo. It says
that this was after the death of
Joseph, that Joseph, “died leaving his affairs
unsettled, then Charles was summoned to Iniscoo to take over.”
Well, we
know that Joseph Sproule of Inniscoo’s ‘affairs’ were very ‘unsettled’ as early
as 1819, and that he was in deep financial trouble.[2] He was badly in need of
help to enable him to retain the Inniscoo property, in which he had invested
quite a bit. I think that Charles Sproule of Crillan and his new wife, Mary Ann
came to the rescue before the death of Joseph Sproule. The evidence for this lies in the birth
records of their first children, or rather the lack of birth records!
The document
tells us that Charles and Mary Ann lived in Crillan, and that their first
children were born there in 1831 and 1833. If the children had been born in Crillan, I would expect to find their baptism
records in the Tubrid Church, where the Crillan family attended, or in St
Mary’s Church, Ardess, where the Feddans Sproule family attended. The records
in both places are excellent, and yet there is no mention of Charles
Sproule and Mary Ann or of any of their children.
Sometimes a
mother went to her family home to have a child, but that can't have happened in this case. That journey
to Inniscoo island from Crillan would be impossible – 60 miles over the worst of roads, and then a boat journey
to the island. I firmly believe that all of these children were born at
Inniscoo.
There is
another factor to consider. Charles Sproule of Crillan was the eldest son, and
therefore he should inherit the father’s land in Crillan. It is highly likely that he
took a large cash settlement instead of this, and that he went to Inniscoo with
plenty of money in his pocket to restore the fortunes of this island.
So it looks like the couple took up residence in Inniscoo immediately after their marriage in 1829. Joseph Sproule, Charles' father-in-law, moved at some stage to live in nearby Edernish, where we know he was definitely living in 1835.[3]
So let’s
put Charles Sproule and his wife Mary Ann Sproule in Inniscoo House when their
children start arriving, but they did not stay there for very long. Charles had a
lease for the whole island, there was 109 acres in total. The family document tells us that Charles now had an occupation;
“Charles got Agency from Inniscoo (Coast Guard). He was Receiver of Wrecks that means he was in charge of salvaging any ships that wrecked off the coast. And there were probably many as this is at the northwestern tip of Ireland just before the Atlantic Ocean goes into the North Sea.”
The
‘agency’ does not mean that Charles was the actual Coast Guard person, but
rather that the property was being used by the Coast Guard. The coast guard station had been on Rutland island up
until 1841, and there is evidence that it was on Inniscoo in 1844.[4] It is likely
that Charles moved his family out of Inniscoo House and on to their next house around this time in the
early 1840s.
By the mid 1850s, we can see
the Coast Guard presence there in Inniscoo in Griffiths Valuation. Charles would have had an income from the government for the use of the property, and rent
to him from the houses and offices used by the Coast Guard staff. In addition
to all of this, his taxes are cut in half in Griffiths Valuation;
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| Griffiths Valuation for Inishcoo, Askaboutireland.ie |
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| Inishcoo House is restored now and is a holidy home |
Charles Sproule and his wife Mary Ann Sproule together with their 6 children had moved to the mainland by this time. The children's birth dates were again given in the Sue Gress family document;
Mary Anne b. 12 April 1831Martha b. 23 April 1833Anna b. 24 July 1835George b. 17 June 1839Charles Joseph b. 21 June 1842Catherine Elizabeth (Cassie) b. 21 June 1842
They have moved to a large house called Lackbeg House on the outskirts of Burtonport, in the townland of Leckbeg.
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| Lackbeg House today |
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| Griffiths Valuation for Leckbeg, Askaboutireland.ie |
This family all ended up in foreign parts, the last left Lackbeg in 1888, but we know that their time living here in Lackbeg House, Burtonport, remained close to all of them forever. We know this because they came back to visit, even down to the current generation. However, there was another very striking reason that we know this, but I’ll go in to this in the next post.
Other Posts in this Series;
References
[1] Chapter 3 of Fred Sproule's Volume 2 The Sproules in Ireland, unpublished
[2] Letter dated Ref; Ms 35,392 Conyngham Papers, National Library of Ireland, from Joseph Sproule to Nassau Forster, agent to the Conyngham Rosses estate, from David Slattery
[3] Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of the Irish Fisheries : first report, Dublin Castle, 2nd November, 1835. PRINTED BY ALEXANDER THOM, North Earl St, Dublin. See previous posts
[4] I found this information on the Coast Guard station in a family history site of the Rohu family where a man called John Vincent Rohu actually served as a coast guard on both Rutland and Inniscoo.
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