The Sproull Family History Booklet - the first Writers

It was even more amazing than I remembered!  I saw it again when I finally reached the  Public Record Office of Northern Ireland after a long hiatus. It was my main goal when I got to PRONI, to look at this information on the Dungannon/ Antrim / Carrickfergus Sproules that I had seen on a previous visit. I knew that there was a large family tree, and also some sort of stapled booklet with information. I located both of these when I was there, I photocopied everything and took it home.

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 9^th 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 16^th March 1817 & was interred in the burial ground at the back of the Poor house in the 11^th lot 6^th 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 9^th 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 23^rd 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 7^th 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