By Maureen Storey  

In this journal we welcome six new members: Louise Throop, Reg Baker, Frank Dovey, Ed Bassford, Jim Preece and Jenny Jemison.

Louise is a descendant of George Soule of the Mayflower and has been researching the Mayflower families for many years. She is currently coordinating a DNA project that it is hoped will finally   link George to his roots in the UK.

Reg wrote to ask if we had any information about the family of his mother Edith May Soles, who was born in Gloucester in 1903. From the Society's records I've been able to help Reg trace his mother's family back to Charles Soules, through his son Robert who married Elizabeth Bishop in Gloucester in 1841. We've not yet conclusively identified Charles's parents but the most likely candidates in our database are Robert and Elizabeth Soul, whose children Charles, Lydia and Elizabeth were baptised at Lassington, GLS between 1771 and 1778.

Frank is researching the family of his great grandmother Hannah Soal, who was born in Westminster in 1840 and was the daughter of Philip Soal and Ann Savaker. To date the earliest record we have for the family is the marriage of Philip and Ann in Westminster in 1828.

Philip's origins have so far proved elusive. We know that Ann remarried in 1849 so Philip must have been dead by then and the death of a Philip Soal appears in the GRO indexes in 1847 but this Philip's death certificate says that he was 82 when he died. If this is the Philip who married Ann Savaker, he would have been 75 when his youngest child was born and, whilst not impossible, this seems somewhat unlikely. Unfortunately the family have also proved elusive in the 1841 census – the returns for the street in which they were living in 1840 appear to have been lost.

Ed has a double interest in the Society – he is researching his own Saul family in the West Midlands and also the family of his partner, whose 3 x great grandmother Mary Soul (born 1804, Olney, BKM) married Thomas Cobb in 1828. Ed has given us information about Mary's descendants and we've been able to give him data that take the family back to the early years of the seventeenth century.

Jim and Jenny are both descendants of Sarah Sole, who was born in Edmonton, MDX, in 1825. Jim has been searching for Sarah for many years and has approached us several times in the past, hoping we might be able to throw some light on her background. This time we were able to help as I'd found Sarah's baptism while looking for that of a William Sowle (b 1831), who later proved to be her brother. Although we've only been able to take Jim and Jenny's family back one generation (to William Sole and Mary Ann Edden who married in Stepney, MDX, in 1825)  and we can still find no trace of Sarah's first marriage to Edmund Sanders, we have been able to give them quite a lot of data on Sarah's brother's descendants.

We have also made contact with two other members of this family: Nicola Marston, a descendant of Sarah and her second husband Thomas Marston, and Janet Saker, a descendant of William Sowle (b 1831) and Elizabeth Holmes

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