demic, the small-pox.

He returned in February 1756,

when the following entry on the Church record is made:

"Dr. McSparran having returned from his sorrowful voyage he made to England where his wife died and lies buried in Broadway Chapel burying-yard, in Westminster. She died the 24th day of June, (1755,) a few minutes after twelve in the morning, and was interred Wednesday evening the twenty-fifth. William Graves preached the funeral sermon, and buried her. Brigadier General Samuel Waldo, Christopher Hilly, Esquire, Mr. Jonathan Barnard, all three New England men, and George Watmough, an Englishman, were her pall-bearers. Dr. McSparran, Dr. Gardiner's son John, were the mourners. The corpse was carried in a hearse drawn by six horses and two mourning coaches, one for the bearers and the other for the mourners. She was the most pious of women, the best of wives in the world, and died as she deserved to be, much lamented."

This bereavement was a sore affliction to Dr. McSparran. His health became seriously affected, and his constitution began to exhibit symptoms of rapid decay. He was thus left alone in the world, without the consolations of a family to support his declining years. He continued, notwithstanding, to perform his clerical duties. On returning from a pastoral visit at Providence and Warwick, he lodged with Lodowick Updike at the mansion of his deceased friend, Colonel Daniel Updike, in North Kingstown. Here he complained of being indisposed, but the next day he reached his own house,*

* The house is now standing at the foot of McSparran Hill, in South Kingstown.