by John Slaughter  

Gwen Hackett has joined. In my co-ordinators report in the April 2002 journal I gave details of Gwen’s Saul ancestry and that she was a descendant of Joseph Saul and Elizabeth (nee Miller) who emigrated to Australia around 1883. We left the story believing that Joseph was the son of a John Duer Saul baptised at Kirklingon, Cumberland in 1817. Though Joseph would have been born around 1848 there was no entry in the GRO birth indexes that appeared to relate to him so we needed to find the family on the 1851 census in order to prove the connection or otherwise. This has now been done. John Amos kindly searched the 1851 Gateshead census and found the family.

The head of the household was indeed John Saul, a mason, aged 35, born Kirklington, Cumberland. As well as his wife Margaret there were also four children, the first two of which were born in Cumberland. This enables us to date the move of the family to Gateshead to around 1847. Gwen now has charts for her Saul lineage back to 1585.

It is always nice when members pass on to me Saul information etc. that they notice in their daily lives. Gwen did this by sending to me a copy of the Macleay River Historical Society Journal for March 1995. This told the story of the “The Saul Family on the Macleay”. The family founders were William Saul and his brother James who emigrated to Australia from the village of Cawston, Norfolk. I already had quite a lot of the genealogical information, provided by a descendant, Lorraine Stacker, a former member of our Society, but the article gives a lot of interesting biographical detail. We are seeking permission to publish extracts from the article in a future journal.

It would be appreciated if members could forward on to the Society any information they come across concerning our names, no matter how small. Sometimes even small snippets of information can be extremely valuable and may provide the missing link.

I have mentioned before that I monitor the Saul Genealogy Genforum Website and pick up on messages that appear useful. One such message was posted by Dave Adams, who wanted to know if anyone had any information on the Saul families living at Leamington, Warwickshire. From correspondence with Dave I was able to establish that he was a descendant of the marriage between George Saul and Elizabeth Tew at Leamington in 1887. Dave was able to provide me with details of the descendants of this couple, which I did not have. He will be distantly related to other members the closest being Frank Saul from Middlesborough. Dave has expressed an interest in joining.

At the committee meeting in May I was handed a letter recently received from a Peter and Lyn Ford enquiring about a Joseph Saul, auctioneer for a company based in Southport, Lancashire called Bentick Saul & Co. Joseph’s wife was called Maria (possibly Mary Isabella Hemer) who had died in 1899 in Ormskirk. Coincidentally it was only a few days previous whilst I was trawling my way through the wills index that I came across the entry for Maria’s will. She was described as of Portland Street, Southport, wife of Joseph Saul, and who died on 11 February 1899. Probate was granted to Joseph, auctioneer, effects £475 6s 6d. The GRO death index gives Maria’s age as 45. More research is needed to establish the identity of this couple.

We are in the process of setting up a network of Saul Co-ordinators, which is intended to work along similar lines to that organised by the Sewells, i.e. each co-ordinator will take on the specific area. A meeting has been arranged of the interested participants for 21^st July so will have occurred by the time you read this. The Sauls in England break down fairly neatly into geographical areas and at present it looks like the only major area that needs a co-ordinator is Devon/Cornwall. In Cornwall the spelling is predominately Sawle and Maureen Storey and Rosemary Bailey have both put in a lot of work in constructing family trees from the IGI and other data. We know there are a number of Sawle researches out there but we have had only limited contact with them and none have become members of our Society. This is largely therefore an untapped source and it really needs someone to take it on. If anyone is interested I would be pleased to hear from them.

I will provide more details on the “Saul Network” in the next journal.

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