Susanna Soule

Genealogies of Mayflower Families, Vol. III, "THE SOULE FAMILY," by JOHN EDWARD SOULE, Colonel USA Retired, M.S., of Washington, D.C., pp. 378-380. Read on the page image, 4 Aug 2026 (Ancestry coll. 48107, images 390-392). p. 380, the children of George Soule, item v, verbatim: "SUSANNA, b. say ca. 1634 although there is questionable evidence which would place the birth in 1642. Neither the date nor place of her death or that of her marriage to FRANCIS WEST, SR., has been established. Issue, surname West: Francis3 Jr., Thomas, Peter, William, Richard, Clement, John, Martha, and Susanna." Those nine children match RM family F739 NINE-FOR-NINE, with no extras on either side. p. 379 on George Soule: an indentured servant or employee of Edward Winslow; "the 35th of the 41 men who signed" the Mayflower Compact; "He died at Duxbury about January 1679/80 because the inventory of his estate was taken 22 Jan 1679 (o.s. which was 1 Feb 1680 n.s.)." On his wife: "His wife was Mary Bucket (undoubtedly a variant of Beckett) who arrived at Plymouth on 31 Jul 1623 in the Anne, but the date of their marriage has not been found." p. 379 also DISOWNS the English origin commonly attached to George Soule: Banks, Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers (1929) p. 80, only "tentatively" identified him as son of John Soule of Eckington and "probably" kinsman to Robert Soule -- "Unfortunately, subsequent authors citing Banks as their authority have carefully omitted those key words." Keep George Soule's parentage UNPROVEN in this tree.

The Mayflower Descendant, Vol. XXVI (1924), George Ernest Bowman, "SUSANNA SOULE'S HUSBAND IDENTIFIED: SHE MARRIED FRANCIS WEST" -- a serial at pp. 1-11, 53-60, 103-112, 171-176. Read on HathiTrust (Public Domain, Google-digitized; item mdp.39015011558445), 4 Aug 2026. This is the ORIGIN of the identification. p. 1, verbatim: the entries in Elder Samuel West's "Memmorandum Book," "particularly those on original pages forty-five and forty-six, united with data long in possession of the present writer, prove that Susanna Soule, daughter of George1 Soule, the Mayflower Passenger, married Francis West of North Kingstown, R. I." READ THE NEXT SENTENCE BEFORE RELYING ON THIS: "The data from the Plymouth Colony, the Plymouth County, Mass., and the North Kingstown, R. I., records which connect the 'Memmorandum Book' with George Soule, the Mayflower Passenger, will be printed in an early issue." THOSE RECORDS WERE NEVER PRINTED -- verified across vols 26, 27 and 28 (the magazine was then suspended 1926-1929). All four 1924 instalments are transcript of the manuscript, and vol. 26 p. 176 ends it "(To be continued)". See the citation for MD 29:56 for why.

The Mayflower Descendant, Vol. 29 (1931), p. 56 -- "Thirty-Fifth Consecutive Annual Report" of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. Read on the page image at AmericanAncestors.org (DB407), 4 Aug 2026. Verbatim: "The old 'Memmorandum Book' of Elder Samuel West, containing THE ONLY KNOWN RECORDS WHICH PROVE THE MARRIAGE OF SUSANNA2 SOULE, DAUGHTER OF GEORGE1 SOULE OF THE MAYFLOWER; and the Hezekiah Keen Account Book, containing the only known proof of the marriage of a granddaughter of Richard Warren of the Mayflower, were very important gifts to the Society." This is the Society's own statement, seven years after Bowman promised corroborating records, that the manuscript contains the ONLY known evidence. It explains why those records were never published: none were known to exist. The identification therefore rests on a single family manuscript written in 1802, 141 years after the marriage. That is not a reason to reject the descent -- the Society admitted members on it from 1924 -- but it fixes the evidentiary base precisely, and no further search in this journal can improve it.