Cum Grano

Salt family of Shropshire

Salt family of Shropshire

The Shropshire Archive holds a ‘Salt Collection’, although not mentioning Henry Salt it gives a brief outline of the Salt’s of Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Salt Collection introduction:

Thomas Salt was born in 1793 in Rugeley, Staffordshire, where his father was a solicitor. The family had strong links with Shropshire: Thomas Salt’s mother was daughter of George Corser who was a banker and solicitor in Whitchurch, and his brother George, who seems to have been active in Wem, married a daughter of Creswell Tayleur of Great Bolas, another solicitor. [The George Salt that married Harriot Tayleur was not related to the Thomas Salt born in 1793 in Rugeley.] A sister married Edward Humphreys, a Shrewsbury surgeon.

In the 1820s Thomas Salt built No 6, Quarry Place and married Harriet Moultrie whose father was vicar of Cleobury Mortimer. Ten of their children survived infancy. One son joined the army in Bengal, and two others, George Moultrie Salt and William Salt, became partners in the firm.

On his father’s death in 1864, George Moultrie Salt became head of the family. He became the father of twelve children. Of his eleven sons, three emigrated, and three joined the firm. Of these, Reginald Nowell Salt became de facto head of the family on his father’s death in 1907, and his son Denis Hubert Salt was the last representative of the firm of Salt and Sons. He moved to the Isle of Man in the late 1990s.

Thomas Salt’s other son to join the firm was William, who in 1858 married Edith Sutton. She was to become the head of the Sutton family, thereby controlling the family trust fund. The only son, Walter Sutton Salt, entered into partnership as a solicitor in Wem, but he died in 1911 at the age of 46.

The Salts were solicitors for many of the major landowning families in Shropshire and in some cases also acted as their agent or steward. Details…

The Powys County Archives Service holds the ‘deposit from Salt & Sons, Solicitors of Shrewsbury; Montgomeryshire’.

Thomas Salt was the eldest son of a solicitor by the same name based in Rugeley, Staffordshire. In 1815 he was made a partner in the Shrewsbury firm of Pemberton, Coupland and Dukes. On the deaths of Robert Pemberton and William Coupland the partnership of Dukes & Salt remained in business until 1839, when Thomas Farmer Dukes retired. In 1845 Thomas Salt was joined in partnership by his son George Moultrie Salt, and later, by another son, William, and the firm was renamed Salt & Sons. More recently, the firm became Wace, Morgan and Salt. Details…