By Maureen Storey
There has been very little activity over the last few months, so I’ve had time to tidy up some of our records. In the last coordinator’s report I described the evidence that enabled us to link the families of Chartham and Elham in Kent and that has resulted in a renumbering of the family members in both Family Historian and the combined Sole index which took an inordinate amount of time.
I’ve also been using both the Suffolk and the Worcestershire parish register indexes that are on-line to add to our records for these counties. Neither county features any large Sole families (unless George Sole of the Mayfair did actually come from Eckington) but nevertheless there were far more additions than I expected, particularly in Worcestershire.
Another new source of information that has appeared on Ancestry is the records of The Prerogative and Exchequer Court of York Wills 1389-1858. The early wills are written in Latin but the later ones are in English, though the handwriting is difficult to decipher. Again we don’t have that many Sole families in the area covered by the court but those wills I’ve been able to read have added new information to our records. For example, the 1584 will of Matthew Soulle of Ellerton mentions his wife Christabel, sons John, George and Robert, daughters Jane and Ann, son-in-law Thomas Jarves (it’s not clear which daughter he is married to) and granddaughter Katherine Jarves. Previously the records we had for the Ellerton family were sketchy: the earliest surviving parish register begins in 1675 and although some bishops’ transcripts survive for earlier periods they are fragmentary. Therefore our tree was somewhat speculative and started with John Soule whose sons John and Thomas were born in about 1590 and 1600 respectively. Matthew’s will, however, takes the family back another generation.
Ancestry has also updated its Poor Law Removal and Settlement Records 1698-1900 for London. If any of your London ancestors fell on hard times, this is where to look for them. The database covers a number of different kinds of Poor Law records. The majority are records of admission and discharge from a workhouse. The amount of detail given in these admission/discharge records varies considerably – some give details of whole families, whilst for others each entry gives details of only a single individual even if all the family have been admitted together.
For example compare the following entries:
Hackney Union 1850, Ellen Sole, aged 9, been in workhouse for 6 months (Ellen had been admitted with her father, brother and sister no mention of them appears in this record)
Holborn Union Julia Sole, aged 62, b Cambridgeshire, she was living apart from her husband George (aged 65 b Cambridgeshire), who she believed was also destitute, though he had formerly run a pub in Cheyney Mews
Wandsworth and Clapham Union 1904 Lillian Sole, aged 40, admitted with son Samuel, aged 3, her illegitimate daughter Barbara Hitcham was in service in Anerley
The Poor Law records include some settlement examinations and removal orders. For example when Florence Sole, aged 20, applied to the Strand Union for help in 1874, her settlement examination showed that her place of settlement was in fact Hackney. In cases like this the receiving Union could either send the applicant to her Settlement Union or it could ask the settlement union to reimburse the cost of her upkeep, though it’s not recorded what happened here.
The last major class of records recorded are denoted ‘asylum’. Most of these are just pleas for help/admission to the workhouse but some concern people, like my 2xgt grandfather Henry Sole, who were sent from workhouse infirmaries to lunatic asylums. One unusual case I came across was that of Charles Albert Sole, aged 40, who in 1902 was found by police wandering in the City of London in a dazed and confused condition, though not drunk. The police took him to the City of London Workhouse who applied to the magistrates for permission to commit him to a lunatic asylum. By the time he was examined by a doctor to confirm that he was insane, he had apparently recovered his wits and declared to be ‘not insane’ and released.