Although we've had no new members since my last report we have had some interesting queries.

The first of these came from a lady who, with the help of her son, is researching the lives of the men whose names appear on the Banbury World War II memorial. This memorial was updated in 2003 after research by local veteran Harry Cowie, who discovered that not all the war dead appeared on the original memorial. As a result two new panels were added. These included not only those who died during the war but also men who died as a result of wounds years later. Among those listed on these new panels were T. A. Sole and C. J. Sole. From the Commonwealth War Graves records it was possible to identify T. A. Sole as Thomas Alban Sole, an able seaman who was killed along with most of the rest of the crew when HMS Egret was sunk off Vigo, Spain on 27 Aug 1943 (this was the first Allied warship to be sunk by a guided missile). C. J. Sole, however, proved more difficult to track down as he does not appear in the Commonwealth War graves records. The most likely candidate is Charles James Sole, Thomas Alban's brother, who enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1921. However, we know that Charles died of a heart attack in 1955, so it is difficult to understand why he would have been included on the memorial.

Beryl Meehan contacted us hoping that we'd be able to identify William and Mary Soll, whose  children Bridget, William, Thomas and Ann, were baptised in Saffron Walden, ESS, between 1683 and 1692. Essex has always been something of a black hole in the Sole records – although we know that there were some Sole families there during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, e.g in Castle Hedingham and around Romford they largely seem to have died out or moved elsewhere by the eighteenth century and Beryl is the first person to contact us with early Essex connections. However, Saffron Walden is not far from the Essex/Cambridgeshire and Essex/Hertfordshire borders, so it is possible that William came from one of the south Cambridgeshire or Hertfordshire families rather than an Essex ones.

Armando Framarini is researching his van Soldt/Solt ancestry and thinks that it is possible that there is a connection to the Sole families in the USA and UK. During his research Armando has acquired copies of some sixteenth and seventeenth century English Sole wills, and he has kindly given us copies of those of Robert Sole, salter of St Giles Cripplegate, London (1595), John Sowle, yeoman of Strensham (1615), Thomas Soole, brewer of St Botolph without Aldgate, London (1619), John Soale, innholder of Sevenoaks, Kent (1647) and John Soll, of HMS Phoenix (1687).  n

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