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Notes on Cullen Soden/Cullen Timeline Felix Soden

Nine years ago I began to trace Soden families and their background in the hope to explain to my children what a German name was doing in the middle of Ireland. They got the answer this New Year's Eve, when I finished the book, so I include from it some background information on the name in Ireland and England.

The Irish Sodens have their origins in Warwickshire, England stemming from the Swalcliffe, Oxfordshire branch. They belonged to many other different religious persuasions, Church of England/Ireland, Quakers, Methodists (principally in Canada), Roman Catholic and Protestant in Ireland. Links with the German families of the same and similar names of Soden/von Soden cannot at this stage be conclusively proven, though there are a number of strong possibilities to support this claim.

Grange and Warwickwhire: Grange, Co.Sligo is, of course, the main townland with connections to the Sodens. It appears to me that these Sodens had some link, yet to be established, with the major families of Warwickshire, though they were not prominent landowners. They took posts as soldiers/planters/colonists in the Cromwellian forces. Many families from Warwickshire and Oxfordshire have been mentioned in connection with Sligo, e.g. the Throckmortons, the Temples, Fiennes, amongst others. Cromwell had only companies of men, that is, groups of men, often families like the Cootes, (3 brothers and a cousin), who formed their own companies with the incentive that whatever they gained they kept either for themselves and gave in payment to their men.

I have found no evidence to support the claim in the UCD folklore archive that 'Soden' obtained his lands other than by official means. I believe the answer to this to lie in distribution of lands outlined by Dunlop in his work on 'Ireland under The Commonwealth'. Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, of the 19th century, was of the Temple family and there are many references to the name Temple in the Grange/Moneygold area of Sligo, though some derive from the Gaelic timpeall/church. Palmerston was by all accounts not the most popular landlord. This is evidenced by his treatment of Thomas Soden and other tenants in the 1790's who experienced difficulties with rent demands and his handling of the famine situation on his estate.

Chester Refugees,1689: The Sodens of Sligo being staunchly Protestant, fled the armies of James II to Chester. It amazes me that such a Protestant family should flee to one of the most Catholic cities in England; perhaps because it was close and a good port.

Although very little has been written about them, the Chester Refugees were Protestants who fled to Chester in 1689 at the time of the Battle of the Boyne to avoid the Catholic forces at the time and later returned with the advent of William of Orange. As you can see THOMAS SODEN was 94 years of age and had a wife, CATHERINE and a child . I do not know who this child could be but it may well have been the child of THOMAS SODEN Jnr. recorded in the Hearth Money Rolls of 1665 (though one reliable source records the year as 1655). In the Betham abstracts in the Genealogical Records Office (Dublin), there is mention of THOMAS SODDEN and his brother ROBERT, and his wife, KATHARINE. The fact that the 1689 will mentions John Pugh as the brother of Katharine in Chester and his business as a shopkeeper is a very helpful indication. The Chester Guild documents have not yet been completely transcribed but may well shed important new light on these two families.