May 2012 - Hows that?

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mardler
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Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

May 2012 - Hows that?

Post by mardler »

A very happy Memorial Day to our US readers. Here in New Jersey, it's a beautiful day for remembering the contribution of our veterans to our nation's security. If you served, thank you.

This month we have a variety of stories to share.
Olympic heroes
In 1948, Henry James Howes represented Great Britain at speed-skating in St Moritz
In Rome in 1960, Carolyn House represented the USA in the swimming pool at 400m.
Sadly, neither of them won a medal. Carolyn later became the world record holder at 800m and 1,500m but neither of these were then Olympic events and she didn't make the team for Tokyo in 1964.
We have researched Henry's family history but have drawn a blank on Carolyn. Can you help?
And this year, there are two Howes/House torchbearers among the 8,000 people in the UK who are fortunate enough to carry it. One of them is a former special Olympian but both have interesting stories. You can read about them here:
Adrian Howes: http://www.london2012.com/torch-relay/t ... index.html
Sue House: http://www.london2012.com/torch-relay/t ... index.html

DNA testing
The histories of the early European settlers of the US make fascinating reading. Those from the UK in particular frequently left because of their desire to practice their religion in line with theit own beliefs, something which still echoes in the US body politic today. My attention was recently drawn to an article written about the Howes and Lothrop families here: http://www.mcopus.co.uk/lothropp.asp . Thing is, that that family's name was written Howes, Howse and House in old English documents and became House in the US. But as we know from the HFA pages on this website, there is a Howes family which has been in the US a similar length of time, but has lost touch with its origins.

I'm wondering whether these two families are different parts of the same family. Are you a descendant of that House family, or do you know someone who is? If so, please do get in touch. A simple yDNA test for two or three people from different parts of that line will establish whether or not there is a link. Perhaps someone has already taken a yDNA test and could share the results?

Different spellings
Talking about multiple spellings, we found another individual who has a “full House” of the four major spellings of our name. Her birth was registered as Susannah Howes in 1839 in Dogsthorpe, just outside of Peterborough in England. In the 1841 and 1851 censuses, she was Susannah House. In the 1861 census she was Hows and her marriage to William White in 1863 was registered with a maiden name of Howse. Five surnames in only 24 years!

South Africa
A few weeks ago, I reported that the LDS church had placed online a huge amount of parish record material for South Africa. They've done it again! This month they placed online the civil records of deaths in that country. Sadly, neither of these record sets are indexed. If you have ancestors in South Africa, familysearch.org is becoming your website of choice. If you fancy working through them looking for House/Howes/etc, please do let me know. We have one volunteer already , but there is easily enough volume for two, three, even forty people!

Two lost HOWESes
Does anyone know the family of Albert Edwin Howes of Thame in Oxfordshire who died in Florida? Correspondent Nick Bishop wrote me to say that he has a letter from Albert, then in Chicago, IL to a relative of his. See: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename for a transcript of that beautiful letter. Mr Bishop would like to return the letter to someone from Albert's family. So if you do know him, please get in touch.

We're also trying to trace the family of Mabel Ena Howes who won the British Empire Medal in 1945 after her war service. Her reminscences can be found on two different WW2-related websites. There were too many Mabel E Howes births registered in the 1910s/20s for us to be sure which one is she.

Progress this month
We had a few problems with our master file this month but think that we now have them fixed. As a result, we didn't add quite as many records as the “recent normal”. However, as of this moment, we have over 60,300 lives in our database! Thanks especially to those who have sent in their trees in the last month, some of which remain to be entered. We've also re-united three families who had drifted apart over the years, including one man named Howes whose emigrant father died when he was an infant and he has never before had any contact with another member of his family (welcome, Edward!).

And, once again, thanks to everyone for your continuing support.
Regards
Paul
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