Life
1795-1850 [var. 1786-1848; occas. M’Sparran]; b. Oct., Drumseerin, Co. Derry; Glenkeen school-master, 1802-16; entered TCD as pensioner, 1816; author of very a successful novel, The MacDonnell and the Norman De Burgos (1829); emig America, 1830; and settled in Philadelphia; issued Tales of the Alleghanies (q.d.) and Hermit of the Rocky Mountains (q.d.), et al.; d. May, Philadelphia; bur. Presbyterian Cemetry at Cermantown Ave. and Berks; there is a notice in Coleraine Constitution for 31 March 1906. ODNB PI DIW IF DUB
Works
The M’Donnell and the Norman de Burgos: An Irish Legend (Belfast 1829; enl. rep. Glasgow 1869), and Do. [rep. of 1869 Edn.], with biographical preface (Limavady: Anthony Rowe, 23 Main St. 1989) [ISBN 9072808 2],
References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), gives bio-dates 1795-1850; schoolmaster in Derry; Tales and the Hermit in the States; The Legend of M’Donnell and the Norman de Borgos (Belfast 1829; Gill [q.d.]); concerns O’Neills, O’Cahans, et al., ‘the work of a half-educated man’; shows considerable ill-digested knowledge of Irish history; [Brown].
Notes
T. H. Mullin, Limavady and the Roe Valley (1983) incls. prefatory remarks stating that a pit in which were the bodies of some fifteen massacred men inspired the author’s historical interests.
Kate Newmann, Dictionary of Ulster Biography (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1993) also lists James McSparran (d.1757), ord. Church of Ireland; missionary at Rhodes Island, where he entertained Berkeley; also James McSparran (1892-1970), b. Glasgow, ed. QUB; bar, 1916; Anti-Partition League; Nationalist MP in Stormont, 1945-58.
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