Robert Sprout

Ben M. Angel notes: The timeline of the Phips Expedition through Summer 1690 is as follows:

Winter 1689-1690: Frontenac, Governor General of New France, orders attacks against nearby English settlements after England, under William and Mary's "Revolutionary government" (reference - the "Glorious Revolution"), declares war against France. In the New World, this becomes known as "King Williams' War".

April 1690: Sir William Phips was appointed by the "Revolutionary government" in Boston to head an expedition of English colonial troops against New France. He was given 7 ships (78 guns total) and raised 736 men (446 militia and 290 professional soldiers) from both Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth.

May 19, 1690; The Phips Expedition arrived at Port Royal in Acadia. French Governor Louis-Alexandre des Friches de Menneval, with only 80 men and 18 unmounted cannons, can do nothing but negotiate an honorable surrender. Phips refused to put the terms in writing (he was illiterate) and when his men began looting the captured port, he reneged on the terms.

May 22, 1690: Phips recorded that "we cut down the cross, rifled the church, pulled down the high-altar, breaking their images."

May 23, 1690: Phips recorded that "we kept gathering plunder both by land and water, and also under ground in their gardens." The violence and looting forever destroyed any possibility of further cooperation between the English and the Acadians.

June 3, 1690: Following the plundering of Port Royal, Phips deployed Captain Cyprian Southack to the French fort at Chedabouctou (present Guysborough, Nova Scotia) with 80 men to reduce Fort St-Louis, guarding that village. At the same time, he deployed Captain John Alden to Cape Sable Island and the Bay of Fundy to raid the native allies of the French there (particularly at Grand Pre and Chignecto). The English marching to Chedabouctou met against some resistance by local warriors allied with the French, but this was driven back as the English marched onward to their destination. The English Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Chedabacto is as follows:

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Phips sent Captain Cyprian Southack to Chedabacto with 80 men to destroy Fort St. Louis and the surrounding French fishery. (Dauphin de Montorgueil) was stationed at the fort with 12 soldiers. The soldiers at Chedabucto's Fort St. Louis, unlike those at Port Royal, put up a fight before surrendering.[7] They tried to defend the fort for over six hours, until fire bombs burned the fort to the ground. Southack destroyed the enormous amount of 50, 000 crowns of fish.[8] The garrison capitulated on honorable terms and were sent to the French capital of Newfoundland, Placentia.[9]

References:

7.^ Brenda Dunn, p. 39

8.^ Emiley Griffith, p. 153

9.^ A history of Nova-Scotia, or Acadie, Volume 1 By Beamish Murdoch, p. 195; also see an account of the battle in Joseph Robineau de Villebon, Journal of Villebon, 3 October 1692, in Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century: Letters, Journals and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Villebon, by John Clarence Webster (St. John, N.B.: The New Brunswick Museum, 1934) Villebon's Journal,

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Phips returned to Boston and raised a new expedition, this one to take Quebec and New France from Frontenac. Its backers issued bonds set in anticipation of the loot expected to be taken from the French colony.

August: A group of 32 ships is assembled at Boston, with 2,300 militia raised and loaded aboard for the attack against Quebec City. The force would not arrive until mid-October.

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Based on this timeline, it seems likely that Robert Sprout would have died at the most intense fighting of the early part of King William's War at Chedabouctou (present Guysborough). However, the only secondary sources (namely a bunch of corroborating GEDCOM files) available for Robert's death show him as having died during the "Phipps Expedition" of 1690, sometime in June. As such, it can be deduced his died in Acadia (present Nova Scotia), one of 10 such soldiers that did not return from there, according to the Turner Register of 1690.

( http://www.archive.org/stream/turnerregister1900davi/turnerregister... )