In Cork, after Robert Emmet's death in 1803, Curran met Captain Henry Sturgeon, a nephew of the Marquis of Rockingham, and married him in November 1805. The two lived in Sicily, where Sturgeon was posted; she had a child, John, who died at the age of one month, after a difficult birth. Sarah Sturgeon died of tuberculosis on 5 May 1808. She had wished to be buried in her father's garden at Rathfarnham, beside her sister Gertrude, who had died at the age of twelve after a fall from a window in the house, but her father refused. She was buried in the birthplace of her father at Newmarket, County Cork.