In the last few months the Society has welcomed three new members: Frank Soul, Michael Cordwell-James and Michael Soole.

Frank started compiling his family tree after retiring and has traced his line back to John Soul and Keziah Clark who married in Eastington and Alkerton, GLS in 1737. Frank has been kept busy following up leads on more recent relatives from various family history sites and is now keen to find out more about John and Keziah's birth families. He has been told that Keziah had a sister who also married into the Soul family and hopes that this might be a clue to finding their origins. At the moment the most likely candidate to be John's father is the Richard Soul, whose son John was baptised in Coaley, GLS, in 1706 but we have no firm evidence to prove or disprove the connection, just a coincidence of (relatively common) forenames in the church records of Coaley and Eastington and Alkerton and the proximity of the two parishes.

Michael Cordwell-James wrote asking if we knew anything about the family of his 2 × gt  grandmother Mary Ann Sole. Mary Ann married Frederick John Smith, a mill sawyer, at St Peter's, Bethnal Green, MDX, in 1846 and the couple had five children. Although our records only take Mary Ann's family back another generation to her parents Thomas Sole and Hannah Caddick, we were able to give Michael some information about Mary Ann's siblings and to put him in touch with member John Steel who is also researching this family.

Michael Soole is the grandson of Frederick Watson Soole and Edith Ellen Pitt who married on 14 July 1906 at St Mary's, Finchley, MDX. The family has been traced back to Richard Soole, carpenter, and his first wife Elizabeth Cooper. Richard and Elizabeth married in Duxford, CAM, in 1761 and moved to the neighbouring village of Ickleton, sometime after their first son, Richard, was born in 1762. The Sooles were a prominent family in Ickleton village life for over 150 years, serving in such capacities as church warden, parish clerk and village postmaster. but by the middle of the twentieth century there were no Sooles left in the area. Michael is hoping to be able to take the family back beyond Richard and Elizabeth – we do have a possible baptism for Richard in our records but as with the Gloucestershire family outlined above we are still seeking evidence that we're on the right track.

One enquirer that we weren't able to help was Roger Sharland. Roger sent us the details from the Quaker records of the marriage of his 6 × gt grandparents Daniel Bell and Elizabeth Sole, which indicated that the marriage was approved by the congregation on 15 Aug 1717 at Witney, OXF. In the records the groom is said to be of Tottenham and the bride to be of Chipping Norton. Unfortunately we have no record of a Sole family in Chipping Norton at this time and so can't link Elizabeth to a birth family.

Nicolette Richards is compiling a family tree as a present for her niece's 21^st birthday and wrote to ask if we could help her to sort out some of the links in the tree she had drawn up. Her research had taken the tree back to John Sole who was born in Ickham, KEN, in about 1815 and who married Jane Homans in Littlebourne, KEN, on the 19 April 1845. We were able to indicate where Nicolette needed to look next to get past John and back to the earlier generations of the family – a journey that should take her back to the marriage of John Sole and Elizabeth Cook in Nackington, KEN, in 1750.

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