Richard John Soal

Richard John Soal was born in 1807, in St Peter’s Kent, along with his twin sister, Sarah. He was one of 10 children. 

His parents were John Soal (1776-1837) and Sarah Ann King (1780-1850). Richard, like his father John Soal, was an agricultural labourer. 

On the 22nd of November 1807, Richard John Soal and his sister Sarah were baptised. He had been born during the period of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Kent at this time was at the forefront of a threat of invasion. 

In 1830, there was a widespread uprising in the southeast of England known as The Swing Riots. Agricultural labourers such as Richard John Soal and his family protested against low wages, high taxes and the introduction of machinery which threatened to replace their jobs. 

In Kent, farm buildings, machines and crops were wrecked or destroyed by agricultural rioters. 

He would marry Ann Jordan (1809 - bef. 1861) in St Peter, Kent around the 12th of October, 1835. 

On the 3rd of February, 1837, Richard's father, John Soal died. Following the death of his father,  at the age of 30, Richard John Soal was accused of theft and added to the criminal register. Perhaps, he had a dispute with his siblings over who would inherit his father's property, but this is only a theory. 

His trial was held on the 6th of April 1837. He was accused of larceny before being acquitted.

Richard John Soal became estranged from his family, travelling with his wife 10 miles to a farming village near St Peter.

They began living in a farmhouse. They were agricultural labourers.

In 1838, they had their first son John James Soal, who was baptised at St Peter, Kent, England  on the 11th of March 1838. 

On the 4th of April, 1841, Richard John Soal and Ann had their daughter Ann Elizabeth Soal baptised in St Peter, Kent, England, who died young.

His second son was Thomas Soale or Edward Thomas Soal (1844-1917), born in St Peter’s, Kent. 

In 1845, their child John James Soal died and was buried on the 15th of May 1845.

His third son was Richard William Soal (1846-1913, St Peter, Thanet, Kent). He was baptised on July the 30th 1846 in St. Peter, Kent, England, 

By 1851, they had already moved to work and live on a different farm. The farm they moved to was Joss Farm House in Thanet, St Peter, Kent.

Unlike his father who fathered many children, Richard John Soal had only two sons who he could barely afford to keep fed. Some of Richard John Soal's Soal ancestors were too poor to afford their own gravestones.

By 1861, Richard John Soal's wife had died and both his sons had left him at the farmhouse.

His son Richard William Soale left the farm to work as an apprentice for a blacksmith called Peter Young. Peter Young had four daughters and no sons and accommodated Richard as his servant. 

Richard W Soale, now a blacksmith, perhaps saw an opportunity to employ his skills for shipbuilding, which brought him into contact with a mariner's daughter, Eliza Ann Forwood, who he would marry in the year of 1868. 

There were better work opportunities available in London than in the farmlands of Kent at the time. Eliza's father was also a mariner, so likely had connections in sailing and shipping. 

In 1868, Richard John Soale joined his two sons to make the journey to Dalston, London, possibly by Victorian steamboat from Ramsgate to London as there were such trips at the time. 

By 1871 he lived on Holly Street in Dalston, St Philip, London and worked as a laundreyman. 

Upon losing his job as a laundreyman, he could no longer financially support himself and was forcibly admitted to the Hackney Union Warehouse on the 13th of May, 1885, where he died in September of that year.  

His life spanned the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), Abolition of British Slave Trade (1806-1807), Battle of Waterloo (1815), The South American Wars of Independence (1808-1829), The War of 1812 (1812-1815), Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1816), 1832 Great Reform Act, The Opium Wars (1839-1860), The First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-1846), 1845 Great Famine in Ireland, 1851 Great Exhibition, Texas Annexation of 1845, The Oregon Treaty of 1846, Mexican-American War (1846-1848), The Alaska Purchase (1867), The Revolutions of 1848, The Crimean War (1853-1856), The Indian Rebellion (1857-1858), The Italian Unification (1861-1867), The Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869), German Unification (1866-71), The American Civil War (1861-1865), The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), The First Boer War (1880-81), The Mahdist War (1881-99), The Sino-French War (1884-85), The First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), The Spanish-American War (1898), The Second Boer War (1899-1902), The Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, 1879 Zulu War, 1885 Third Burmese War,1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War, Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) British monarchs: George III, George IV, William IV, Queen Victoria British Prime Ministers: Cavendish-Bentinck, Perceval, Jenkinson, Canning, Robinson, Wellesley, Grey, Lamb, Wellesley, Peel, Lamb, Peel, Russell, Smith-Stanley, Hamilton-Gordon, Temple, Smith-Stanley, Temple, Russell, Smith-Stanley, Disraeli, Gladstone, Disraeli,  Gladstone, Cecil US Presidents: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur