STOP PRESS

HowesFamilies.com is featured in an article in this month's Family Tree Magazine, available at your (UK) newsagent.

Paul Howes will also be speaking about the study at the "Who Do You Think You Are Live" exhibition at Olympia in London on February 25. More details on the exhibition are available here, here and here.

Great oaks from tiny acorns...

Welcome to HowesFamilies.com, dedicated to reconstructing families for people named HOUSE, HOWES, HOWS and HOWSE, which are frequently variant spellings of the same name.

On the links page there are links to several global surname distribution websites. Taken together, what they show is that Southern England is the main source of our name, with individual concentrations for Howes in Norfolk and Northamptonshire, Howse in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, and House in Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire. When you look at all of them together, it is perfectly obvious that these fit together into a coherent whole. Our suspicion is that we are separated only by strong regional accents! For a longer explanation, click on any of the top three icons in the upper right of your screen.

There are now nearly 55,000 named individuals in reconstructed family groups, now we think about 15% of the ultimate population. We have redesiged the site, with additional pages and information about our names. In particular, we now have a set of pages devoted to notable people with our name. We have two Victoria Cross winners, several notable soldiers, a couple of knights, ship's captains, authors, inventors and a film actress among us, for instance. If you have additional suggestions, do let us know.

Without heavily promoting the site (until recently!) interest has been strong and worldwide. We have over 450 members registered from almost twenty countries, including Argentina and Malaysia. After three years we are one of the larger sites devoted to a single name anywhere. What seems to makes this site particularly interesting and useful is that we have built family groups as we have grown. This study is not just about collecting ancestors' names but about connecting people, literally. Several correspondents have been able to take their research back 4 generations or more and many others able to renew contact with parts of their extended family where contact had been lost (us included!).

We welcome all suggestions for change and improvement, and especially more data! If you'd like to join us and collaborate on making this site absolutely THE resource for all people named House, Howes, Hows and Howse worldwide, please use the contact button at bottom right.

Paul Howes

Paul, I want to help. What can I do?

Thanks for asking! Five things, please:
- register on the site so we can stay in touch - towards top-left on this page
- send your own tree - GEDCOMs are best, but anything will do
- send copies of any photographs of individuals or headstones, or certificates, to photos "at" howesfamilies.com
- consider whether you can help. Go to November 2008's newsletter here and look at the kinds of thing we need. What gives you energy?
- tell your relatives!
Thank you

Final note: this study is done under the auspices of the Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS). Our ultimate goal is to collect as many occurrences of our name as we can find around the world. Under GOONS rules we are obliged to respond to all queries. We'd do that anyway but if we don't live up to it, please feel free to let them know at www.one-name.org.