By John Slaughter
I am pleased to welcome new members Valerie Sawle and Laurence Boswell-Saul and also to welcome back to the membership Barbara Armstrong.
At the time of writing I have no details of Valerie’s Sawle connection but will hopefully be able to report on this in the next journal.
Laurence Boswell-Saul is the brother of member Neale Saul who joined the Society in 2002. At that time we had limited information as to his Saul lineage. Neale and Laurence were both born in the Newcastle area. Their grandfather was an Albert Saul who married Edith Ann Boswell in 1918.
On the 1911 census Albert was living in the household of his parents John and Mary (nee Davison). John was a coal miners hewer (he worked at the coalface), aged 57 years and born in Cumberland. The census return stated that John and Mary had been married for 35 years, had eight children of whom seven were still alive. John’s place of birth is given on various censuses as Sebergham in Cumberland. This ties in very nicely with a John Saul baptised at Sebergham on 7th January 1855 to David Saul and Mary (nee Witton). David was also a coal miner, so it may well be that the coal mining industry was the principle motivation for John’s relocation from Cumberland to the North East. I believe that David was born in Maryport to William Saul and Mary and have some earlier links in the Cumberland area and am in the process of comparing notes with Laurence.
Barbara Armstrong has recently revived her interest in her Saul ancestry. Her grandfather was James Saul who married Mary Ann Houghton in 1919 in Preston, Lancashire. They had one daughter Mavis Carmen.
James was the eldest of five sons born to Robert John Saul and Rebecca Darlington. Censuses state that Robert John was a cotton spinner, a common enough occupation in Preston.
Robert John was one of seven children of Jonathan Saul and Henrietta Langton. The first three children, including Robert John were born in Liverpool which was where Jonathan and Henrietta were married in 1864. The family then seem to have moved to Preston by 1873 where the remaining four children were born. Jonathan was a joiner by trade.
Jonathan Saul was also Preston born and he was baptised there on 29th March 1840. We have recorded him as being the son of Robert Saul and Ellen Fishwick who were married at Preston on 26th October 1835. However on Jonathan’s birth certificate it gives the name of his mother as Ellen, formally Walmsley. This is also the case on the birth of another daughter Margaret in 1852. We are fairly sure that we have only one family unit here and it is unclear why the mother’s name differs, perhaps there is something in Ellen’s past that would explain it.
Robert’s father was also named Robert who married Mary Wesley at Preston in 1813. We have identified only two children, Robert baptised in 1814 and Jonathan baptised in 1819. The origins of the earliest Robert have not been identified. When I researched the Preston Sauls, a good few years ago now, the main difficulty I encountered was that most of the early Sauls were named Robert and distinguishing one from another was very difficult. We seem to be dealing with five if not six Robert Sauls that moved to Preston in the early part of the 1800s when Preston grew dramatically in size. Some of the Roberts who moved to Preston we have tentatively linked to Roberts found elsewhere in the Lancs/Cumbria area but we have never found a suitable candidate for the Robert who married Mary Wesley.
