The Will of John Sproull the Apothecary - Ending the Ancestry Myth

 Here is the will of John Sproule the Apothecary who died on 21 May 1787 in Strabane. I was anxious to put this will up so that the owners of the 52 trees on Ancestry who have connected John Sproule the Apothecary to Hoods and McClellans could see this will and read it carefully.

To those 52 people I say;

1. Rebecca Sproule, daughter of John Sproull the Apothecary did NOT marry John McClellan/McClelland when she was 11 years old
2. Rebecca Sproule did NOT have her first child when she was 12 years old
3. And, wait for it… at the ripe old age of 23, Rebecca, daughter of John the Apothecary, did NOT have her first grandchild, a Robert Hood.

NONE OF THAT HAPPENED!!!

Now, strange to say, and despite the totally illogical nature of this information, this is not your normal Ancestry Myth. In fact, it is not an Ancestry Myth at all – it is a pre-Ancestry Myth!

A man called Francis Hopkinson Gilpin put together what looked like a page from a Sproule Family Bible, and it was this that made the connection to the McClellan and Hood families. Now, I don’t know if it was Francis himself or some older person who added the McClellan/Hood connection, but there it is in all of its illogical glory. However, there is something very strange  about this page.

I believe that the original family details look very accurate for John Sproull’s family – I think it was at one time a page from his family bible, from the bible of John Sproull the Apothecary.  Some time later a notation is put on to the page, about the John McClellan marriage. Someone just made a mistake about who married John McClellan. Fascinating!

Anyway, in real life, Rebecca Sproule, daughter of John Sproull the Apothecary married a man called John Barclay on 18 Jan 1774,

    “Married at Strabane, John Barclay, son of Robert Barclay, to Miss Sproul.”  Irish Genealogical Abstractsfrom the Londonderry Journal 1772-1784 -

You will see in the following will, dated 5 Mar 1787, Rebecca Sproule, now Rebecca Barclay, is still married to John Barclay. That is 14 years after she is supposed to have had her first Hood grandchild! There are no Hoods or McClellans anywhere in this family - none at all.

The WILL of John Sproule the Apothecary  5 Mar 1787

391 53 257167  Registry of Deeds, Familysearch.org, transcribed by Kate Tammemagi

A memorial of  the last will and Testament of John Sproull late of Strabane esq Apothecary  bearing the date 5 Mar 1787. Whereas the said John Sproull after leaving & bequeathing to his daughters, Jane Sproull, Mary Sproull, Rebecca Barclay and Catherine Porter, and to his son John Sproull the several legacies therein mentioned to be paid out of his personal estate and bequeathing all his silver household plate to his said three daughters, Mary, Rebecca and Catherine and to his son James  Sproull to be equally divided between them, he left devised and bequeathed to his friend William Smyley, his heirs, exeqs and admins, all his real estate as far and upon the several uses and intents and purposes in said will and hereinafter expressed and declared concerning the same. That is to say,  the intent and purpose in the first place is to permit and suffer the testator’s sister-in-law, Francis Cunningham, to have take and enjoy to her own, ever yearly and every year during her natural life or unmarried state out of the Testators dwelling house one annuity or yearly rent of 5 pounds sterling. And to in Trust the tenements and lands of Barlayhill and Mullandrait with the Appurtances in and near Stranurlar County Donegal and for the use of his said three daughters Mary Sproull, Rebecca Barclay and Catherine Porter, their heirs and assigns forever, and also his two fields, two houses and gardens with the appurces in Magirr in the parish of Urney share and share alike as tennants in common and not joint tennants. And in trust as to the testators town and lands in Meenacheeran and Polygerryleane with the Appurtances in the Co of Tyrone to and for the use of the Testators eldest son John Sproull, his heirs and assigns forever, and in trust to the Testators town and land in Dowish and the Testators house and office houses in Strabane to and for the use of the Testators son James Sproull forever subject nevertheless to the payment of two hundred pounds to the Testators son John Sproull and the Annuity of five pounds yearly to the testators sister-in-law Frances Cunningham and the Testator and he left all the residue and remainder of his personal estate to his three daughters, Mary Sproule, Rebecca Barclay and Catherine Porter, and of his said will the Testator did constitute and appoint his friend William Smyley and his son James Sproull Executors and he left his executor William Smyly  10 pounds to buy mourning and the said will is duly signed sealed published  and declared by the said Testator John Sproull as and for his last will and testament in the presence of Andrew Mease esq Doctor in Physick, Samuel Morton and James Patton, merchants all of Strabane.

The Lost Sproule Boys

I had a blog block. It wasn't a roadblock, of the genealogy type, where I came to a dead end. My block was a conflict. It was the inability to resolve conflicting information about one generation of the family.  It stopped this blog dead.  Somehow it became very important that I resolve this before moving on. And now at last I have the missing piece of evidence, that will allow me to complete this stepping stone and move on to the next.

The Conflict

I had gathered evidence of six children in the family of my great, great grandfather, Andrew Sproule of Tullymoan. Four of those six children had died in the 1830s as young adults, and I written of this in a previous blog post.¹

However, Jack Elder, in his hand-written tree of this family drawn up in the 1890s, had recorded eight children, not six. Elder had said that there were two older boys. The eldest, Andrew, had died young in Jamaica, and the second, Samuel, had also died young but this time in Bombay.²

Jamaica 1820

I trust Elder enough to know that there was a good chance he was right. Also, it would make sense for these boys to go overseas as they had Uncles in both Jamaica and Bombay at that time. Andrew and Samuel would have been born round 1800, and, presumably, would have been in their early twenties when they left home. I hunted for any trace of my two Sproule boys - in India, Jamaica, England and Ireland.

There is an awful lot of information on-line now, including the recently added East India records. I still could not find them, no records and no deaths of either Andrew or Samuel, sons of Andrew Sproule of Tullymoan.

The Block

I needed to put up this family on my blog to complete this generation and to move on to the next. It somehow seemed irreverent to put up Andrew and Rebecca’s family without the two oldest boys, but I wasn’t going to put the names up there if I could not validate Elder’s information. What if Elder was wrong and they didn't exist at all? Or, worse still, perhaps they belonged to a completely different family. And equally, I couldn’t just skip them, and move on to other generation's trees. I know it's only a blog, but somehow putting the entire family group up together had become very important.

The Letter From America

This week, through the magic of genealogy web contacts, I got a wonderful present. It was a series of letters written between 1800 and 1840 from Sproules in Tyrone to the family of Robert Sproule of Ohio. Members of the Bridgehill Sproules wrote the letters from their home just south of Castlederg, County Tyrone, to their cousins in America, and the Tullymoan Sproules are also cousins of both families.

In a letter written on 28^th March 1827, Robert Sproule of Bridgehill gives his Uncle in America news of the Tullymoan Sproules:

“The Tullymoan family have been in low spirits of late, having heard of the death of Andy, the eldest son. He died in November last at his Uncles in Jamaica. Sam, the next, is preparing for a surgeon by his uncle who has lately returned from India and is living in the neighbourhood of London with his wife and one child, a girl”

Elder was quite correct, the two oldest boys did, indeed, exist!

This was proof positive of Andrew, the eldest son of Andrew Sproule of Tullymoan. Andy died in November 1826 at the home of his uncle James Sproule in the Rosemount Plantation in Jamaica. Sam, the second son, was alive at the time this letter was written in 1827 and he was studying to be a surgeon with his Uncle Samuel Sproule in Cheltenham in England.³ But just one year later, when his Uncle Samuel was writing his will, young Sam, son of Andrew of Tullymoan, was no more.

The Family of Andrew and Rebecca of Tullymoan

The family is complete at last! But this also now proves that Andrew and Rebecca, the parents of this generation, had indeed  suffered great tragedy in their lives. In 1826 they had 8 healthy adult children, and twelve years later, there were only two remaining alive.  Of the six who had died as young adults, only one had lived to marry and have children. William John, who became a Doctor in Dunfanaghy, managed to father two babies before his death in 1838. Happily, one of these, Andrew of Fernhill, lived to have many children and a descendant was in touch just this week!

Of the two children who lived to rear families:

1.       Jane Sproule, the eldest girl, was born in 1802 and lived to 1864. She married another Sproule,  Andrew Sproule of Glenfin, and they bought the Broomfield house, in Donegal,  from her Uncle Robert Sproule. The Broomfield Sproules had at least four children:

·         Andrew Sproule of St Louis who married Florinda Jane Spoule d. 1865

·         Samuel Sproule who died in St Louis 1866

·         Elizabeth Sproule

·         Rebecca Sproule

·         Charlotte Sproule

2.       James Sproule of Tullymoan, my great grandfather, married Mary McGlinchy. He was the youngest child of the family, born in 1816, but with the death of the other three boys, James inherited the Tullymoan farm. James and Mary had nine children, and his descendants are there to this day.⁴ 

Now I can move on!


The completed Family Tree - Andrew Sproule and Rebecca MacKay of Tullymoan.

References:

¹ Other Children in this family -  The Mystery of the Children

² Elder’s Tree of The Nabob Sproules
³ The story of Uncle Samuel - Samuel Sproule of the Medical Board in Bombay

⁴ James Sproule and Mary McGlinchy    The Family Tree, Matriarch of Tullymoan

Thanks to Tim Hayes for providing the Spoule of Ohio Letters.