Family founded, it appears, by a Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir Robert Sterling; a Scottish Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, whom the breaking out of the Civil War had recalled from his German campaignings, and had before long, though not till after some waverings on his part, attached firmly to the Duke of Ormond and to the King's Party in that quarrel.

A little bit of genealogy, since it lies ready to my hand, gathered long ago out of wider studies, and pleasantly connects things individual and present with the dim universal crowd of things past,--may as well be inserted here as thrown away.
This Colonel Robert designates himself Sterling "of Glorat;" I believe, a younger branch of the well-known Stirlings of Keir in Stirlingshire.
It appears he prospered in his soldiering and other business, in those bad Ormond times; being a man of energy, ardor and intelligence,--probably prompt enough both with his word and with his stroke.

There survives yet, in the Commons Journals, [2] dim notice of his controversies and adventures; especially of one controversy he had got into with certain victorious Parliamentary official parties, while his own party lay vanquished, during what was called the Ormond Cessation, or Temporary Peace made by Ormond with the Parliament in 1646:--in which controversy Colonel Robert, after repeated applications, journeyings to London, attendances upon committees, and such like, finds himself worsted, declared to be in the wrong; and so vanishes from the Commons Journals.
What became of him when Cromwell got to Ireland, and to Munster, I have not heard: his knighthood, dating from the very year of Cromwell's Invasion (1649), indicates a man expected to do his best on the occasion:--as in all probability he did; had not Tredah Storm proved ruinous, and the neck of this Irish War been broken at once.

Doubtless the Colonel Sir Robert followed or attended his Duke of Ormond into foreign parts, and gave up his management of Munster, while it was yet time: for after the Restoration we find him again, safe, and as was natural, flourishing with new splendor; gifted, recompensed with lands;--settled, in short, on fair revenues in those Munster regions.
He appears to have had no children; but to have left his property to William, a younger brother who had followed him into Ireland.

From this William descends the family which, in the years we treat of, had Edward Sterling, Father of our John, for its representative.