Tuesday, September 15, 2026

The Sparling-Hanley Hanly marriage of Irish-Palatines moving to Canada together

 

The parents of Mary and John Sparling where BROTHERS: PHilip and Christopher Sparling.

Philip Sparling

Son of Christopher Stuffle Sparling and Margaret Mary (Legier) Sparling

Brother of John Sparling, Peter Sparling, Catherine Sparling, George Sparling, Margaret Sparling, Catherine Sparling and Christopher George Sparling

 https://www.selves.ca/getperson.php?personID=I14854&tree=tree1

Christopher Stuffle Sparling 
Birth 1726 
Gender Male 
Death 1787 
Christopher George Sparling 
Birth 08 Dec 1762  Killeheen, County Limerick, Ireland Find all individuals with events at this location 
Gender Male 
Death 19 Oct 1821  Rouska, County Limerick, Munster, Ireland Find all individuals with events at this location 

Cause: Murdered ... probably political dispute ....Died 19 OCT 1821. Murdered - by "The Whiteboys". [2]

 he name The Whiteboys (in Irish, na Buachaillí Bána, meaning "the white boys") comes from the white smocks or shirts that members wore over their regular clothes during their nighttime raids

The Whiteboys (Irish: na Buachaillí Bána) were a secret Irish agrarian organization in 18th-century Ireland that defended tenant-farmer land rights for subsistence farming and were particularly anti-Palatine (nothing changes).... https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sparling-509

The murdered Christopher was farming at called Rooska on the Courtney estates[6]. This is now called Rooskagh West or in Galic Rúscach Thiar. This farm is 15km by road from his burial place.

"One of the best-known murders of Palatines was that of Christopher Sparling. Sparling, formerly of Adare, was killed ostensibly for taking land on the Courtenay estate, but it seems likely that his murder was at least partly a response to his having injured Whiteboys when they attacked his home three years before. Eight armed men had also broken into his house in broad daylight the previous 16 July (1821) and 'carried away two fine muskets' (NA SCP 2296/10). An account of this murder was recorded by the folklore collector Seosamh O' Dalaigh more than a century later. The seventy-one-year-old informant, Michael Liston of Monige, called the murdered man Sparnell (Sparling was deleted from the manuscript and Sparnell inserted above, which indicates that the collector knew that Sparling was the correct name of the man in question (IFC MS 629, 60-1)). The record in the burial register of Rathkeale church for Christopher Sparling, parish of Newcastle, who was buried on 19 October 1821 in Rathkeale, simply states that he was 'killed by the Whiteboys'. Liston's account states that the Sparlings were 'planted at the butt o' Rooska ... by the landlord' but that 'they were not wanted there'. He goes on to say that a man called Walker was hanged for the murder although he was not the murderer. The Limerick Chronicle,15 February 1823, states that Michael Breen was charged with Sparling's murder. The rentals of the Courtenay estate show that David Barry surrendered a farm at Ruscha [sic], on Lady Day 1819, which was then let to Christopher Sparling.'[7  

 https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/GDNM-LDL/mary-corneil-sparling-1786-1871

 Larger memorial image loading...

  troubles began around Newcastle West in County Limerick that spawned the great Rockite movement of 1821-24, an exceptionally violent agrarian rebellion fueled by a combination of economic, sectarian, and political motives. Named for their mythical leader “Captain Rock,”? the Rockites were especially remarkable for the frequency of their resort to murder and incendiarism as weapons of warfare. They garnered support extending far beyond the ranks of the poor; their movement eventually embraced many of the better-off farmers in the southern region where they exercised an extraordinary sway—most prominently in Limerick and Cork, but also in portions of Kerry, Clare, Tipperary, Waterford, and Kilkenny. The intensity of their grievances, the frequency of their resort to sensational violence, and their appeal on key issues—especially rents and tithes—across a broad front presented a nightmarish challenge to Dublin Castle. This challenge prompted a major reorganization of the police, a purging of the local magistracy, and the introduction of large military reinforcements. Adding fuel to the conflagration was a great upsurge in sectarianism and millenarianism that accompanied this agrarian rebellion. Prophecies of imminent Protestant doom gained a firm hold at the popular level among Catholics in the affected region—indeed, far beyond the seven aforementioned counties. In short, the Rockites showed little inclination to submit to control by Catholic priests or members of the landed elite and presented a stiff test to the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.’ 4

INTRODUCTION

The Rockite movement involved, then, a sustained outburst of agrarian violence greater than any that had previously occurred in Ireland. This is no small claim, for there had already been a long line of organized and widespread rural protests stretching back to the first “Whiteboy” movement of the early 1760s—a movement that gave rise to common use of the term “Whiteboyism” to denote the seemingly endless succession of agrarian disturbances for which Ireland became notorious in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.* The Whiteboys of the early 1760s were not the very first manifestation of regional agrarian protest in Ireland;

 By the eve of the Great Famine gross inequality of income had become characteristic of Irish rural society. At the top of the structure in 1841 there were approximately 50,000 rich and 100,000 “snug” farmers, the mean size of whose holdings was 80 and 950 acres, respectively; together with the 10,000 or so landowners, they cultivated roughly half the land and controlled access to most of the rest. In the middle of the structure were 250,000 family farmers; the mean size of 11,
their holdings was about 20 acres, and they usually met their labor needs from within the family. At the bottom—the depressingly broad base of the social pyramid—were an estimated 1.3 million poor peasants and laborers. These poor peasants, or cottiers (300,000, with a mean holding of 5 acres), and the laborers (1 million, with a mean holding of 1 acre) both worked for wages and purchased food. 

 Murder without Remorse

Two other murders gave extensive popular satisfaction and furnished a significant stimulus to the growth of organized discontent. One was the fatal shooting of the Palatine Christopher Sparling at Ashgrove near Newcastle in mid-October 1821.?° Sparling’s was a celebrated case because of its special circumstances. Sparling had earlier been persuaded by Hoskins to take the lands of Rooskagh on the Courtenay estate in Ardagh parish. He had invested a large sum in building a new farmhouse and out-offices and in making other improvements, but he fell into a dispute with Hoskins about his rent, as a result of which the agent had Sparling’s substance seized and auctioned at Newcastle. Normally, this characteristically harsh treatment might have elicited sympathy for the victim, but not in this instance because the Palatine Sparling had come to the Courtenay estate in response to Hoskins’s “fair promises to establish a colony of loyal Protestants” on the property. This kind of activity was always likely to provoke a violent response from the Catholic side. In addition, Sparling had also earned hatred in another way. It was said that in an earlier attack on his house at Patrickswell, he had “defended himself and [his] family most nobly, shooting some and wounding others severely.” The consequence was that Sparling and his family were marked down for destruction: “the lower orders seemed to think their assassination [a] meritorious and laudable act.”*! 48

.....

 Notorious victims of the Rockites were repeatedly depicted as terrible warnings to others who might be foolhardy enough to persist in breaking Rockite laws. In December 1821 a County Limerick offender received the terse message, “John Reilly, I desire you to quit this place, or else you may expect the same usage Sparling got... .”°* (The Palatine gentleman Christopher Sparling had been shot and fatally wounded in the previous October.)°?

Captain Rock: the Irish agrarian rebellion of 1821-1824

Parents of Mary Sparling!

 Parents of John Sparling, husband of Mary Sparling:

Parents and Siblings

 parents of Philip Sparling

Parents and Siblings

When John Sparling was born on 11 May 1730, in County Limerick, Ireland, his father, Jürgen "George" Sparling, was 31 and his mother, Margaret Hanna Steuffel, was 35. He married Elizabeth Teskey on 28 October 1784, in Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland. 

 

Margaret Sparling (born Stueffel) was born on 1692, in .
Spouse
Margaret married George Peter Sparling.
George was born in 1699.
They had 14 children: John Sparling, Christopher Sparling and .
Personal Info
Margaret lived in .
Death
Margaret passed away on 1747, at age 55 in .
She was buried in .
 When Jürgen "George" Sparling was born in 1699, in Vellahn, Schildfeld, Boizenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, his father, Peter Sperling, was 37 and his mother, Anna Hülsen, was 34. He married Margaret Hanna Steuffel about 1724, in Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland
 

My great (Chappell/Switzer)-great (Hanley/Switzer)-great (Sparling/Hanley)-Great Grandparents (Sparling/Sparling) 

Susanna Sparling's parents were FIRST COUSINS!! DANG!!

John Sparling (1782-1838) married his first cousin Mary Sparling (1786-1871)in 1804.They lived at Maryvale farm, Derry which should be in the parish of Killaloe in County Clare.

 https://selves.ca/getperson.php?personID=I14863&tree=tree1

John Sparling,   b. 1782, County Clare, Ireland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 31 Aug 1838, County Clare, Munster, Ireland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 56 years) 
Relationship natural 
WIFE Mary Corneil Sparling,   b. 23 May 1786, County Limerick, Ireland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 04 Sep 1871, St. Marys, Perth County, Ontario
He was a farmer. Their son, John Sparling (1812-1871) lived in the townland of Upper Ryninch (or Ryninch Upper) in Co. Tipperary just north of the City of Killaloe....  They emigrated to Upper Canada about 1841 with John's sister, Susanna Hanley, uncle, Christopher Sparling and brother, Frederick Sparling 

 From Lois Sparling:
John Sparling's first wife, Mary Jane Williams, and a daughter, Ann (1835 - 1852), are buried in the Sparling Cemetery close to St. Marys, Ontario. His mother, Mary Sparling (1786 - 1871) died in St. Marys, Ontario, at the home of his brother, Frederick Aquila Sparling (c. 1817 - 1882). Two of John's older children, Robert Sparling (1840 - 1902) and Mary Jane Sparling (1845 - 1873) are buried in St Marys Cemetery. His son, Rev. Dr. Joseph Walter Sparling (1843 - 1912) is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Winnipeg.

A Hanly first married a Sparling in Ireland on February 10, 1831, when Susanna Sparling married Roger Hanly in Killaloe, County Clare, Ireland. [1, 2]
Marriage Details
  • Date: February 10, 1831
  • Location: Killaloe, County Clare, Ireland
  • Bride: Susanna (or Susannah) Sparling (born March 30, 1808, in Killaloe)
  • Groom: Roger "Rody" Hanly (born January 1812)
  • Later Life: The couple later emigrated, appearing in Ontario, Canada, where Susanna passed away in 1898

 AI says:
Cousin marriages were incredibly common among the Irish Palatines due to their unique status as a strict religious and cultural enclave. [1]
The Irish Palatines were 300 families of German Protestants from the Palatinate region who fled French invasions and were resettled in Ireland (primarily County Limerick) around 1709. Because they were a small, distinct group drop-planted into a predominantly Irish Catholic landscape, they maintained tight-knit community structures to preserve their culture, landholdings, and Protestant faith. [1]
Why Cousin Marriages Occurred Frequently
  • Endogamy (Marrying Within the Group): For the first several generations, Irish Palatines married almost exclusively within their own circles. For example, historical records show that in Rathkeale (the heart of Palatine settlement) between 1742 and 1780, only 7 out of 80 recorded marriages involved someone from outside the Palatine community. [1]
  • Limited Pool of Partners: With only a few hundred original families—such as the Shiers, Teskeys, Ruttles, Switzers, and Delmages—the community quickly became deeply interconnected. After two or three generations, it became nearly impossible to find a spouse within the community who was not a first, second, or third cousin. [1, 2, 3]
  • Preservation of Land and Wealth: Marrying cousins ensured that the valuable land leases granted to them by Protestant landlords remained within the family network rather than being fractured or lost. [1]
Tracing the Genealogy
If you are researching Irish Palatine family trees, you will frequently encounter pedigree collapse (where an individual's family tree shrinks because relatives married each other). It is common to see:
  • Sibling Exchanges: Two brothers from one Palatine family marrying two sisters from another.
  • Repeated Surnames: Surnames looping back into the tree every generation.
  • Double Cousins: Children who share both sets of grandparents because their parents were siblings from two intermarried families. [1, 2]
This practice only began to break down in the 19th century as many Irish Palatines converted to Methodism and eventually migrated en masse to Canada and the United States, where their tight-knit communal barriers gradually

It appears my ancestors of Irish-Palantine were inbred cousins?! Sparling-Hanley (Hanly) Maybe that's why they changed the spelling of Hanly to Hanley! Wow. 

 

 https://www.simonhoyt.com/sparling.html

 members of the Sparling family married into the Hanly (or Hanley) family, and these closely knit lines migrated and settled together in Canada.
This connection stems from the Irish Palatines—a distinct group of German Protestant refugees who fled the Rhineland in 1709, settled in Ireland (predominantly in Counties Limerick and Tipperary), and tightly intermarried for generations to preserve land and culture. [1, 2, 3]
The Core Connection: Susanna Sparling & Rodger Hanly
The most prominent cross-family marriage anchoring these Canadian lines is that of Susanna Sparling (1808–1898) and Rodger (Rody) Hanly. [1, 2]
  • The Marriage: They were married on February 10, 1831, in Killaloe, County Clare, Ireland.
  • The Migration: Shortly after, they migrated to Canada West (modern-day Ontario). [1, 2, 3]
The Blanshard Township Settlement
When they arrived in Canada, they didn't settle alone. Susanna’s brother, the famous local pioneer John "Potato Jack" Sparling (1812–1871), emigrated and settled in Blanshard Township, Perth County, Ontario in 1842. He established his homestead right alongside his sister Susanna and brother-in-law Rodger Hanly, as well as their uncles Peter and Christopher Sparling. [1, 2]
Because the Irish Palatine families in Ontario (such as the Sparlings, Hanlys, Switzers, and Shiers) lived in close-knit agricultural clusters and continuously married within their community circles, their children grew up as first and second cousins, further cementing the "Sparling-Hanly cousin" family tree dynamics across Perth and Huron counties
A double first-cousin marriage means two siblings from one family marry two siblings from another family, and their children—who are double first cousins to each other—later marry. [1, 2]
How It Works
  • The Parents: Brother A and Sister A marry Sister B and Brother B (two sibling pairs).
  • The First Generation: The children born to these two couples are double first cousins because they share both sets of grandparents (the grandparents from both the maternal and paternal sides are the same two sets of parents).
  • The Marriage: If two of these double first cousins marry each other, it is termed a double first-cousin marriage. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Genetic and Legal Details

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