“December 11th, 1735. Dr. Giles Goddard[[14]] of Groton, in Connecticut, was married to Miss Sarah Updike, at the house of her father, Captain Lodowick Updike, by Mr. McSparran.
“August 6, 1747. Dr. McSparran baptized Mrs. Elizabeth Wilkinson, wife of Capt. Philip Wilkinson,[[15]] by immersion in Petaquamscut pond. Witnesses, the Doctor, his wife, and Mrs. Coddington.
“Sept. 6th, Thursday, 1750. The bans of marriage being duly published at the church of St. Paul’s, in Narragansett, no objections being made, John Anthony, an Indian man, was married to Sarah George, an Indian woman, the widow and Dowager Queen of Geo. Augustus Ninegret, deceased, by Dr. McSparran.
“Nov. 18, 1750. Sunday, the banns being first duly asked, at St. Paul’s, Dr. McSparran married William Potter, youngest son of Col. John Potter, to Penelope Hazard, eldest daughter of Col. Thomas Hazard, both of South Kingstown, at Col. Thomas Hazard’s house.
“Nov. 7, 1752. Dr. McSparran, at the house of Colonel Thomas Hazard, on Boston Neck,[[16]] married George Hazard (son of George, the son of old Thomas Hazard) to Sarah Hazard, the third daughter of said Colonel Hazard.
“April 11th, 1756, being Palm Sunday, Doctor McSparran read prayers, preached, and baptized a child named Gilbert Stewart,[[17]] son of Gilbert Stewart, the snuff-grinder. Sureties, the Doctor, Mr. Benjamin Mumford, and Mrs. Hannah Mumford.”
In 1741–2, MacSparran in a letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, writes that in the middle arm of the sea, which divides the island of Rhode Island from the Narragansett shore, lies an island called Conanicut, “about eight or nine miles long, and two wide, containing about four or five hundred inhabitants, who had never had Christianity preached to them in any shape than Quakerism,” until he addressed them upon express invitation. He was so pleased with his first visit to the island that he determined to repeat the visit monthly. In the course of his letters he expresses the wish that Ireland was at liberty to send the colonies her woolens instead of her linens, “which will soon cease to be in demand here.”
MacSparran was unalterably opposed, in season and out of season, to all efforts to form a legislative union between England and Ireland. He gives expression to his sentiments on this point, in a letter to Ireland,[[18]] wherein he declares:
“Our attention has for some time been taken up with the news of measures on foot to unite Ireland to England, as Scotland is. I pray God they may never take effect; for if they do, farewell liberty. You are greater slaves already than our negroes, and an union of that kind would make you more underlings than you are now. The accounts of the open irreligion of the greater island inclines me to imagine, that Ireland is on the brink of obtaining (as if these accounts are true, it deserves), its ancient name of Insula Sanctorum. But if ever you come into a closer connection with the more eastern island, corruption will increase.... I suppose those that are sent to rule with you, like those who sometimes are sent here, imagine fleecing to be a better business than feeding the flock. The revolution which happened before you and I were born, might be thought a wise and necessary measure, but we see it has been followed with some bad consequences. To get free from Popery, we have run into infidelity and scepticism.... Except the little revival religion had in Queen Ann’s reign, the church has gained no ground, but in America, since that period.”
Dr. MacSparran, in a letter addressed[[19]] to a friend in Ireland under date of 1752, again refers to Rhode Island, saying: “There are here, which is no good symptom, a vast many law suits, more in one year than the county of Derry has in twenty ... and Billy McEvers has been so long your father’s and your honor’s constable, that he would make a very good figure on the bench of our courts of sessions and of common pleas, and no contemptible one on those of our courts of assize and general gaol delivery.”