As time permits, l am inputting further information into Reunion and organising into charts that are then available to members. A full listing of all the charts is now available. A previous listing appeared in Soul Search (Vol 2 No 4) which covered Byfield, Horley and Leamington Priors. One area of note, particularly for our Byfield interest members, is that I have made a change in the identification of the William who married Elizabeth Devonshire at Byfreld on 18 October 1781. There were always two candidates for the baptism of this William: either the William baptised on 11 February 1759 to William and Ann (Gubbins) or the William baptised on 2 February 1758 to Thomas and Hester (Boot). My original charts assumed that the latter was the case though I know that some members’ trees adopt the former.

There was always the problem of what became of the other William, but I may now have an answer to this. I have carried out some research on the SAULs at Gayton, NTH and established that the patriarch is a William who married Ann Griffith at Gayton on 1 February 1787. His burial entry on 11 May 1832 gives his age as 74 years. Though we have to be careful with ages this does fit in nicely with the Thomas and Hester baptism. Another possible clue is that on William’s marriage to Elizabeth Devonshire he is described as William Saul Jnr, this could suggest that his father was also a William. Though I have no firm evidence either way the balance of probabilities now suggests it would be safer to identify the William who married Elizabeth Devonshire as a son of William and Ann (Gubbins) and I have accordingly amended the charts.

One of the big advantages of using computers is that this can be done reasonably painlessly, it would have been a major headache with manual drawn charts.

This quite nicely brings me to mention some recent progress I have made in establishing the ancestry of Vincent Saull of Canada. Followers of the story may recall that we got of to a slow start. When Vincent was able to tell me that his father was born on 10 May 1891 at 6 Carlton Mews, Fulham to Albert and Emily Saull, I had no difficulty in finding the family on the 1891 census at that address. From information Vincent had given me, I expected to find that his grandfather Arthur Saull would have originated in Winslow, BKM and so it proved. I had a little information on the Winslow SAULLs and on looking at the 1871 census for Winslow found Arthur aged eleven in the household of his parents Saul Saull and Elizabeth. Arthur’s place of birth was given as Addington, BKM (the place where Saul and Elizabeth Clare were married). The census entry revealed that Saul Saull was born in Gayton, NTH that then tied him in with our charts. If we accept the tentative links we have made, then Vincent’s ancestry can be traced back through Fulham, Winslow, Gayton, Byfield and Horley to a John Saul buried at Horley in 1678.

Mary Fell from the USA has joined the Society. Her research has established that her great-great-grandfather James Saul was born in Ireland in 1831, possibly in the County Down area. This is yet more evidence of a significant Irish SAUL connection. Mary told me that there is a place in Ireland called Saul at Downpatrick, Co. Down where St Patrick is reputed to have been buried. It could be then that this place gave rise to the origins of the Irish branch of the SAULs. I have now quite a collection of references to Ireland and given the large number of Irish people who have emigrated over the years, the Irish connection is an important area for further research. Any offers?

Having some years back prepared some manual charts for the Preston SAULs based on the IGI and the 1881 census I was particularly pleased to welcome Trevor Saul as a member. Trevor was born in Preston and had information back to his grandfather Robert Saul who had married Mary Jane Pemberton. Trevor’s father Harold Bannister Saul had been born in 1894 but Trevor knew that there had been earlier children. This information was not quite enough to link with the charts so I suggested that Trevor obtained the marriage certificate of Robert and Mary Jane Pemberton. When this arrived it established that Robert was married at St Mary’s Church, Preston on 3 March 1887, aged 24 years and that his father was a William Saul (deceased), a painter. This information was sufficient to identify Robert on the 1881 Preston census at 64 London Road, aged 18 years, in the household of his parents William and Alice Saul. I had this family on the charts and had linked them back a further generation to a William and Elizabeth who could be the William and Elizabeth Clerkson married at Garstang, LAN in 1822. The connections back from Robert need to be checked with the original records but look promising. I have little information on the Garstang SAULs but Boyd’s Marriage Index shows SAUL marriages there back to the early I 700s so it looks as though there could have been a number of SAUL families there in the I 700s or even earlier.

Just as pleasing as welcoming new members is recovering lost sheep. Peter Saul was lost to the Society for a few years but decided to renew contact having been impressed with our Web site. Peter had not made much progress with his family history but was keen to get started this time. Peter’s father Henry Saul was born in 1919 in Bury, LAN and there was an older brother John. Their father was John Thomas Saul who had married Beatrice Mary Schofield. Peter did not know very much about his grandfather as he had died in 1924 when his father was very young. Various members of the family had been in the police force, an occupation that Peter’s father also entered. I located the marriage entry for John Thomas Saul and Beatrice Mary Schofield that took place on 24 February 1916 at the parish church at Royton, LAN. The groom’s age was given as 25 years and his father as Joseph Saul (deceased), a police sergeant. Peter is continuing with the research. The family tradition says that the family originally came from the Kendal area. This is quite possible, as Kendal is one of our more popular areas

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