By John Slaughter
I have been pleased to welcome two new members to the Society, Marcus Saul and Joel Saul.
Marcus’s grandfather was Ronald Edwin Prior Saul who was born in London in 1915. His father, George Prior Saul however came from Nottingham and we have traced this ancestry back to the Doncaster area of Yorkshire. The earliest ancestor we have on our chart is a James Saul who married Anne Cawood in 1794. They were a Catholic family but the Catholic records are such that it is difficult to be sure about parentage. Several researchers have suggested that James’s parents were James Saul and Ruth Village but documentary evidence for this is lacking. This is by far the largest of our Yorkshire charts.
In my April 2024 report I mentioned new member Ken Saul Jnr in America and Joel Saul is also working to the same family tree. It is claimed that that their Sauls are descendants of a John Christian Saul who emigrated to Virginia, USA, aboard the ship Carolina which embarked from London on 12 December 1774. The passenger list records that John was aged 37 years and a forgeman. He was accompanied by his wife Mary aged 21 years (sic) and his sons S L aged 17 years and John aged 13 years. One issue seems to be the lack of documentary US records covering their arrival in Virginia, in particular the Virginia census records for the relevant years have been destroyed. We have also been unable to identify who John Christian Saul may be from our UK records.
The ship North Carolina, it is possible that it is
the Carolina that John Christian travelled from London to Virginia on
Richard Saul and I have been corresponding regularly on the North West Sauls and Richard has found some very useful information that is helping us to connect some of the many charts that we have. We have recently been corresponding about a Saul family that lived at Ireleth in the parish of Dalton in Furness, Lancashire in the 18th Century. Thomas Saul and his wife Hannah had eight children baptised there between 1716 and 1734. There were a fairly well to do family as when Thomas died in 1768 he left a considerable sum of monies and land to his children under his Will. The Will mentions sons, with amounts left to them in brackets, Richard (£600), John (£700), Thomas, George (£400) and William as well as two daughters Margaret Shaw (£200) and Jane Kirkbank (£200). The eldest son Thomas was left the properties and land at Ireleth and Beetham out of which he had to pay the legacies of monies.
There is a land document in the Lancashire Record Office which appears to relate to obtaining a mortgage on the Ireleth land in order to fund the legacies. This document gives the property as being Sowerby Lodge, the date 1769. I do not have a copy of the document but the index gives the parties to the deed as (1) Thomas Saul of Lancaster, esquire, eldest son and heir of Thomas Saul of Ireleth, Gent, (2) John Saul of Liverpool, ship carpenter, (3) Richard Saul of Kirkby, Ireleth, Gent.
Having owned land at Beetham suggests that Thomas the father may be connected to the Beetham Sauls though we have yet to make the connection. Whilst research is continuing it appears highly likely that several of the sons went to Lancaster and at least one other went to Liverpool and will connect to some of the existing charts that we have.