By Maureen Storey
In this journal we welcome Audrey Goodier and Pauline Pegram back to the Society.
Audrey is a descendant of David Sole and Sarah Ann Worwood. David was born in Hackney Middlesex, in 1834. By 1858, when he married Sarah, he had moved to Birmingham, where he set up in business as a confectioner. He went into partnership with Iden Bruce Reed as wholesale confectioners but the business failed and the partnership was dissolved in 1862. In 1871 David was still in Birmingham and was again in business as a confectioner, but by 1881 he was living with Sarah and their four children in Pendleton, Salford. His occupation was given as ‘confectioner’ in the 1881 census, but in both 1891 and 1901 he was recorded as a grocer. He stayed in Pendleton until his death in 1911. David’s family have been traced back to John Sole and Sarah Hale who were married in Throcking, Hertfordshire, in 1692. There is more on this family on our website at www.sole.org.uk/sole2/p129-132.htm
The earliest record we currently have for Pauline’s family is the marriage of William Soules and Sarah Budding in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, in 1809. William, a clothworker, died in Eastington in 1833, well before the censuses that would have revealed his place of birth. The most likely candidates for his parents are David Soul and Ann Harmer, whose son William was baptised in King’s Stanley, Gloucestershire, in 1790 and this identification is supported by the fact that a David Soul was a witness at William and Sarah’s wedding. However, there are several Soul families in the area at that time and although it looks as if some of them will eventually prove to be connected, there is still uncertainty in the exact relationships.
Apart from the 1921 census, which is currently accessed on a pay-per-view basis and so still rather too expensive to use for a blanket search for Sole and its variants, there hasn’t been much new on the usual family history websites for the last few months. However, while looking for information on some Cornish Sowells, I came across the website of the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks. The first online parish clerks appeared several years ago, the idea being that a volunteer would be available to look up parish register entries etc. for anyone who was unable to visit the relevant record office. In practice, however, the coverage has always been patchy and I suspect that in most areas not many people use them now. The Cornwall OPCs, however, have proved an exception and they have now indexed all (or at least almost all) the Cornwall registers and have a database that includes baptism, marriage and burial entries, as well as information on wills that is free to access. If you have Cornish ancestry, it is well worth a look (www.cornwall-opc-database.org).
