November 2013 - Hows it going?

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

November 2013 - Hows it going?

Post by mardler »

Happy new month, everyone. Greetings from a very chilly Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I have been watching Michigan University college football team narrowly lose to Ohio State University. Big game: just the 113,500 attendees!

We added 1,600+ people to our database during November. I want to say a particular thank you to Mike Howes, who has joined our team of researchers recently. The first fruits of his labo(u)rs are now online. Also pleased to say that during the month, I spent a very pleasant afternoon with Colonel Bob Howes, compiler of the "Howes Genealogy" book at his delightful home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. My wife and I had a terrific time talking with Bob about family history and his numerous other hobbies.

Feline infatuation
From our Howes around the world section this month, we bring you a lady who traded her husband for her cats! And, given that it's St Andrew's Day today it's appropriately from Scotland. Check out: http://shows.stv.tv/this-morning/real-l ... -marriage/. Sadly, unless you live in Scotland, you may not be able to see the video, but it's an interesting story, nonetheless.

And here's a bonus article, from 1888
You thought cricket was slow, taking 5 days to get a result (or perhaps not)? How about a six-day walking match? Sadly our man William Howes lost, walking only 253 miles in the six days. He lost by 54 miles! Check out: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article ... *|||sortby
Question: can you figure out which William it was? While looking, I found this too:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 5F4C8784F9
and this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=eugUnb ... an&f=false

1921 census
The 1921 census for Canada has recently appeared and now looks reasonably stable and certainly searchable. It's free too, at least at Ancestry. Search away

Do you have a story about your Howes relative in World War 1?
In recognition of the coming centenary of the First World War, the Guild of One-Name Studies is encouraging members to put stories about people with our surnames online at its website. I'm sad to say that none of my own close relatives fought in that war. So I'm looking for stories about others' relatives. Do you have one you might share?

Free New England / New York Resources
I was fortunate recently to spend a day with other members of the Guild of One-Name Studies at the Godfrey Library in Middletown, Connnecticut, between New Haven and Hartford. A small white unimposing building on a promontory above the town, it is easy to drive by and miss it, but if you are looking for resources on New England family history the place is an absolute gem., packed to the gills with reference books and microfilm.

And finding myself with a few hours to spare in New York City just last week, I decided to go to the City Archives on Chambers Street, just behind City Hall. I found the marriage certificates for about 25 marriages in one afternoon, most of which I managed to connect to people and families already in our database. Four of them related to people who had immigrated from England and two of those were people whom I'd not been able to follow beyond a particular census date back home. So now I know what happened to them!

Follow up from these two visits will take some months!

A research tip
Not sure I've mentioned this before but occasionally you will find a person in our database who apparently died before they were born! It's a quirk of English and Welsh law but perhaps it can happen elsewhere too. Let me give you an example; John Doe died in the last few days of March. You need a death certificate to bury the body. So that needs to be done quickly. His death would have been registered in the March quarter. But, let's say that John was born in February. You have six weeks to register a birth and do not need a birth certificate to obtain a death cert. Consequently, the birth might not have been registered until April and appear in the June quarter's birth index.

Doesn't happen very often, but it can. So just be aware that, if you know an infant child had died, it's worth checking the subsequent quarter for the birth registration or, if you know of a birth but can't find the death, go backward a quarter.

Thanks for reading!
Paul
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