For most of my life, I believed I was a Sprague.
Genealogical records said so. Family history said so. Even the lineage societies seemed perfectly happy with the idea.
As it turns out, though, four hundred years ago a Fuller quietly slipped into the story—and left a genetic calling card that would take centuries to discover.
Maybe it was the whole Leadenhall thing?
That mystical London place—Leadenhall—the one that looks like something straight out of Harry Potter caught my eye. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be related to such magic? It seemed like a promising new rabbit hole to escape into, especially since it appeared to be a place that both my friend Paige and I might draw from ancestrally.
Nothing like a dash of wizardry to bring a family back together, right?
But it wasn’t Leadenhall at all. Not Leadenhall Market, nor any other such famous London landmark. No, it was a place called Redenhall that had caught my eye, confusing my old man’s brain for a moment and quietly calling me home. It was the echo of bells from that old Norfolk parish—ringing across four centuries—that seemed to be trying to tell me a story.
And as it turns out, it’s an epic one—one that winds its way through both my own ancestry and Paige’s.
It all begins there, in Redenhall, with the Fuller clan.
In essence, it’s a familiar two-part story that crosses the Atlantic—one branch arriving in Plymouth in 1620, and another making its way over about twenty years later. The earlier arrival forms the crucial bridge in the lineage I’ve been carefully reviewing: the descent of Ruth Fuller, daughter of Aaron Fuller and Ruth Sawyer. She married the legendary centenarian Henry Francisco, carrying that Redenhall bloodline down from Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller and ultimately to Paige.
The second thread of the story also drifts from Redenhall toward me, though by a rather less straightforward route—through my biological great-grandmother and her own Mayflower connections.
There is, however, a small complication. Let’s just call it a bit of seventeenth-century “hanky panky.”
Enter my own ancestors: [John Sprague] and Ruth Bassett.
I bracket John Sprague’s name because he spent his entire life believing he was the father of Ruth’s son, Lt. John Sprague, Jr.
As it turns out, he wasn’t.
“Junior Sprague” wasn’t a Sprague at all.
He was, apparently, sired by a stray Fuller.
It’s something of a cosmic joke. While Paige’s line from Ruth Fuller and Henry Francisco appears to have followed the well-documented front door of history, my own path seems to have climbed through the back window—a biological Fuller legacy quietly hidden inside a Sprague surname.
But forgive me. As usual, I digress.
Before going any further, I should probably introduce an important character in this story: Captain Matthew Fuller.
For many years—well over a century—genealogists assumed that Captain Matthew Fuller was closely related to Paige’s ancestor, Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller. Most scholars believed that Matthew was Edward’s son, and for generations his line was accepted as such by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
As it turns out, though, that assumption was little more than a genealogical mirage.
But hold that thought.
About five or so years ago, genealogist Christopher Child of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society noticed something unusual: a presumed descendant of John Sprague and Ruth Bassett did not match the rest of the Sprague DNA group.
Chris is a sharp cookie. He knew that after four hundred years it would hardly be surprising to find a “non-paternal event” somewhere in the genetic record—the polite genealogical term for a child whose biological father is not the man recorded in the family line.
What he discovered, however, was rather startling.
This descendant (and those following like - um, well, me) of Lt. John Sprague, Jr. had DNA that matched not with the Spragues—but with the Fullers.
Say what?
The implication was clear. Those of us who had long believed ourselves to be descendants of Great Migration immigrant Francis Sprague through John Sprague and Ruth Bassett—including those folks like me—were apparently not Spragues after all.
Sorry Francis. These grandkids aren't really yours.
At least not biologically.
Chris Child realized that the descendants of Lt. John Sprague, Jr. were actually carrying Fuller DNA.
The next question, of course, was obvious:
Which Fullers?
Untangling family relationships from four centuries ago—especially when an undocumented relationship is involved—is no easy task. At the time, Chris proposed that the father of Lt. John Sprague, Jr. might have been a son of one of the Mayflower passenger brothers, Samuel Fuller or Paige’s ancestor Edward Fuller, both of whom were living in Plymouth Colony.
For a while, this seemed like a thrilling possibility. It would have created a very obvious Fuller connection between Paige and me and might even have added an additional Mayflower lineage to my own ancestral list.
Among the small but enthusiastic crowd of “Mayflower geeks,” this possibility was greeted with considerable excitement. In my own words:
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Even the august authorities in Plymouth began accepting lineage applications based on the discovery that some Sprague lines were actually Edward Fuller lines in disguise.
After all, who wouldn’t enjoy welcoming the distant cousins of people like John Wayne and Sir Winston Churchill into the extended Mayflower family?
(Heck, it worked for me.)
But as the Great Genealogical Gods giveth, so too do they taketh away.
Further DNA testing in the years that followed revealed something subtle but decisive: a difference within the Fuller DNA itself.
The new evidence showed that while the “Not Spragues” were indeed Fullers, they were not descended from the Mayflower passengers Edward or Samuel Fuller.
Instead, their DNA matched that of Captain Matthew Fuller.
You may remember him—the man long believed to be Edward Fuller’s son, but who, thanks to modern genetic testing, has now been shown not to be.
This doesn’t mean that Captain Matthew Fuller and the Mayflower Fullers weren’t related. In fact, they almost certainly were. All of them came from the same Norfolk parish of Redenhall, and they were likely first or second cousins somewhere back in the family tree.
But the distinction matters.
What it means, in the end, is rather simple.
Like Sir Winston Churchill, I am a Sprague descendant in name only.
Biologically speaking, I appear to be something else entirely: an illegitimate Fuller.
Which, in its own curious way, still makes me a very distant Fuller cousin to Paige—and to Edward Fuller of Mayflower fame.
It’s a curious twist in the tale.
It’s a curious twist in the pedigree
It's a Fuller legacy.
☮
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