The booklet was made up of photocopied pages of handwritten notes. When I began typing the very first page, I stopped at the second entry, slightly gobsmacked;
“William their first child was born Sunday 9th May 1772
about one o’clock.”
How could the writer possibly know the time of the day the first child was born in May of 1772? This
information had to have come from a Family Bible, but when was it written?
The writing on this first page is a very old style, with a flowery
‘g’ and a very distinctive ‘d’. He or
she was writing a long time ago, probably in the late 1700s or early 1800s.
The first two pages have this same handwriting, though it is
obvious that the entries have been made at different times. On page 3 the
writing changes, and a new person is now recording the family details.
“The said William Sproull (husband of Eleanor) died at Belfast on 16th
March 1817 & was interred in the burial ground at the back of the Poor
house in the 11th lot 6th platform.”
‘The said William
Sproull’, is now dead. So I believe he has
to be our first writer. ‘The said William’, with the old style writing, was William Sproull, the very first child named on page 1, who had been born ‘Sunday 9th May 1772 about one
o’clock.’ William Sproull was
recording his his own birth, the births of his siblings and of his own family.
Our second writer, the new writer tells us later, is the eldest son of
William Sproull. He is William Henry Sproull, and he keeps this tradition
going, recording the dates and the times of the births of his children.
So this document had
begun with the births of the children in 1772, and the family had kept doing
this faithfully right through until 1954! It’s all there, generation after
generation.
But the information in this booklet also gives us 2
generations before 1772.
It was here that I had seen the newspaper cutting that I had
written about in another post, it was here in this booklet – with no date or
reference on it. A gravestone had been found inside a house in Dungannon, it had
recorded the death of Surgeon Robert Spoull, who had died in 1747. His son
Robert was also recorded on the stone as having died 23rd Jan 1778. This
was the same family.
So we know that this line of the family was in Dungannon at
the time of the death of Robert Sproull, the surgeon, in 1747.
We now have more information on Robert’s son, Robert
Sproull, who died in 1778. The first line of booklet tells us that Robert and
Mary were married the 7th June 1771. Their son William Sproull, who
writes this first page, also tells us, rather sweetly, that this was ‘a match of their own making’.
I have transcribed the entire booklet, word for word with no
notes or coments. I’ll add the full
family tree after this.
The Sproull Family History Booklet, PRONI Reference : T2578/2
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