By Maureen Storey
Information about the various Sole families continues to trickle in, mostly as new sources are published on Ancestry and findmypast but also from the occasional query. One such query came from Marilyn Reidy, who asked if we had any information on Winifred Sole who married John Lyons, a horse trader of Cork, Ireland. The couple married in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1878 but then settled in Ireland, where they brought up their seven children. Marilyn was able to fill us in on what happened to their children. Winifred’s family has been traced back to Mary Sole, whose son Samuel was born in Aston le Walls, Northamptonshire, in 1777.
Geoff Knott, a long-standing member and contributor to the Society, traces his Soal line back to the Petersfield area of Hampshire and has a particular interest in Soal Farm, Steep, the farmhouse of which dates back to the sixteenth century. He has recently come across a reference to the farmhouse on the Steep Village Website which states that the farm was first documented in 1320, when it was the home of Roger atte Soal. This immediately posed the question: could it have been in the same Soal family between 1320 and the 1700s. As yet no evidence has been found one way or the other, but records are still being investigated.
Several of the new releases by the commercial family history sites have covered ancillary records from the World Wars. Ancestry has published UK Red Cross Volunteers 1914-1918. Among others mentioned is Lucy Sarah Sole, who served at the Red Cross VAD Hospital, Trent College, Long Eaton in 1915. Lucy was later transferred to Colchester Military Hospital, where she caught diphtheria, and it was some time before she could return to duty. Gladys Sole also served in a VAD Hospital, this time The Monastery in Rye, where she worked for two years. However, not all Red Cross volunteers found employment in the hospitals, for example, Ellen Soule of Swindon put her needlework skills to good use and Albert Edward Sole of Shalford assisted the wounded off the trains at Guildford Station.
where Lucy Sarah Sole served.
Meanwhile findmypast has been adding to its collection of Land Army Service Records 1939-1950. From these we learn that Thelma Marion Sole, aged 27, of Sawkinge Farm, Stodmarsh, first joined the Land Army in 1939, as did her 19 year-old sister Joan. The applications for both ladies were withdrawn in December 1939, but Thelma reapplied in 1940 and went on to serve until her marriage in 1943.
Another class of records that findmypast has been slowly adding to are those of the British Home Children. Between the 1860s and 1970s over 130,000 children were sent by British government agencies and charities to live in the dominions. These were children who found themselves ‘in care’ so were largely orphans and children of the poor, the latter often without parental consent.
Many of the children were sent under the care of charitable institutions such as Barnados, but their treatment on arrival varied widely. Some were lucky enough to find a place and training in one of the charity’s own institutions and many of those that did, including young James Sole, who was sent to Canada aboard the SS Dominion in 1906, later sent donations to the charity to say ‘thank you.’ (These were recorded in Ups and Downs Magazine, which was published by Barnado’s in Toronto as a way for the children to stay in touch with each other.)
However, others were sent out to remote farms as labourers and, with little supervision of the placements, were sometimes subject to appalling conditions and abuse. So far, most of the Home Children records that appear on findmypast are from Canada. There is very little information in the records to identify each child, just an age/date of birth and it’s difficult to follow them once they are in Canada.
So far we know of 6 Sole (and variants) children who were sent to Canada:
Albert Soles (b 1869, sent 1884), William Sole (b 1878, sent 1888), Reginald Soule (b 1883, arrived 1896),
Daisy Sole (b 1896, sent 1906), James Sole (b 1896, sent 1906), Frank Sole (b1900, sent 1909).
Of these, William was William James Sole, illegitimate son of Annie Sole of Lurgashall, Sussex. He later married and moved to the USA, where he and his wife Rose brought up their six children. As yet we cannot definitely identify any of the other children.