By Rosemary Bailey
This obituary was published in the August 2018 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society
It is with great sadness that we announce that Kathleen Saul née Johnson, wife of James Edwin (Jim) Saul, passed away on 14th March 2018 at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. Kathleen was born in Kirkby Stephen, England, in 1936 and moved to Australia in 1984 after many years living at Milburn, Cumbria. After emigrating to Australia, she lived in Kalgoorlie, a mining town in Western Australia. She was a keen member of the Sole Society and spent a good deal of time researching the family’s ancestry. She leaves behind three sons (William, Michael and John Saul) and a daughter (Grace Oakley née Saul). She is very sadly missed by her husband Jim, her sons and daughter as well as her grandchildren.
John Slaughter, our Saul Research Co-ordinator writes: Kathleen joined the Society in September 2009. She had contacted me a few weeks earlier having found a couple of articles on our website. She and others had been reaching the family tree for several years and she had been in contact with quite a lot of people.
Her husband James Saul hailed from Westmorland and was the sixth and youngest child of William Saul and Grace Currah. William had served in WW1 but his army records do not appear to have survived. Research had taken the Saul line back to a John Saul born about 1802 in Cartmel, Lancashire (but now Cumbria) and though no baptism has ever been found for him, other evidence supports the theory that his parents were William Saul and Martha Hodgson. This couple were also the ancestors of Peter Saul, who died recently, and who was descended from a daughter Mary Ann Saul.
The furthest back this chart goes is to a Robert Saul who married Ann Hutton in 1626. Their children were baptised at Beetham, Westmorland.