By Carol Campbell

This article was originally published in the April 1998 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society.

I write from a town called Traralgon in Victoria, Australia. My maiden name is Soall. I have on a couple of occasions attempted to research the family with very little success. Imagine my delight and surprise to come across a whole society dedicated to the name.

My father's parents split up when he was a young teenager and he was unable to remember any of his relatives;  this made things difficult. In 1984, we came across a death notice for a Thomas Frederick Soall, my grandfather.  Up until this time, I was in my twenties, I didn't know he was still alive. I sent away and received his death certificate and a copy of his first marriage certificate gleaning some information from these. In the past two years, my aunt (Jan Soall) made contact with her Aunt Lillian who was my grandfather's sister. There is a long story involved but we now have a little more information on the family.

As a point of interest, Lillian Soall was an insurance salesperson and when her husband went to war, she was the first woman in Australia to be paid equal wages for equal hours. She reached the age of ninety in 1997. I have some tapes of her relating some of her past which I am currently transposing to text.

They came out to Australia on a ship called the Ousterly (this may not be the correct spelling). Lillian remembers that the war had just started because they had to have blackout curtains on the ship. This puts the year at about 1913/14. They also had Christmas on board. Lillian's parents' names were Thomas Joseph Soall and Mary Grogan. Thomas had been a bricklayer or labourer at Piccadilly Circus (possibly). As yet, I have been unable to locate death certificates for either of these people but I will continue to try and find out where they died. As far as I know, they where married in 1902 in England, possibly London.

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