by Maureen Storey
There have been only two enquiries since my last report – even BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? failed to provoke its usual flurry of interest.
The first enquiry came from Lisa Farrington who is researching her Newling ancestry. She asked if we had any information on Alfred Moleneux Sole who married Sarah Newling in 1876. Alfred is a descendant of William Sole, son of Valery and Lucy Sole, who was baptised in Thriplow, CAM, in 1588. We have given Lisa some information on the family and offered to put her in touch with another of William’s descendants.
John Steel has traced his family back to Thomas Sole and Mary Irons, who married in Hackney on 28 November 1846. According to the marriage certificate, Thomas’s father was also called Thomas Sole. John wrote asking if we could identify Thomas the father. He had been assuming that he was the Thomas that married Sarah Howard in Bethnal Green in 1814 and that his parents were William and Dinah Sole (whose son Thomas was baptised in Hackney in 1793).
However, the evidence we have indicates John is wrong on both counts! Our records show that John and Sarah did have a son, Thomas Daniel, but he married Lydia Ayres in Bethnal Green in 1846. And William and Dinah’s son probably died in childhood as they named another son Thomas in 1807. We need to find Thomas and Mary (Irons) Sole in the 1851 census to find where he was born in order to identify Thomas’s birth family.
One benefit of having so few enquires is that I’ve had more time to spend entering census details on the database. Working from the indexes available on the Internet I’ve now finished adding the details to my part of the database for the 1901 (PRO index), 1891 (1837online.com index) and 1881 (LDS index) censuses and have almost finished the 1861 (1837online.com index) census. As might be expected so far there have been some families missing from the indexes that I know from previous research do appear in the census and it will be an interesting exercise in the future to compare the indexes from 1837online.com with those from, for example, Ancestry, to see which is most accurate.
Ed: John Steel has kindly provided some photographs for our web site gallery which will be added shortly. In the meanwhile here is one of the photos. It is labelled ‘Bertha Sole’ and to quote John: “date unknown. I do not know the link to my family, but as I have the photo, there must be one! Someone may have some information on her?” Can you help?