July 2014 - House it going?

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mardler
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Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

July 2014 - House it going?

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. Happy new month. Sorry this is a little late but it's sailing season and I've been at a regatta week all week. Productivity is down this month because there have been too many other things for all our contributors to do! We added only 600 people to the database this month, although we have filled in a few gaps and combined a few families.

What's in a name?
Every now and then, someone asks me how I can be so sure that the names Howes, Howse and House are related. Many reasons. One in particular is how frequently peoples' names can be interchanged, ie, written in different ways at different events during their life. I've written before about the document from the 1600s which spells the same man's surname three different ways in the same document.

In a similar vein consider John Howes, born 1809 in Chapel Chorlton, in Staffordshire, England. You can see his record here:
http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename
We have found this man's name recorded in 14 different instances, and as you can see his surname was spelt in 6 different ways! Check out too John's brother Thomas and John's son, Henry, who also have a raft of different spellings of their name.

Certificates
Just want to record our thanks to correspondent Garry Howes who has provided us with well over a dozen certificates to add to our collection. Do you have any you could scan in for us, please?

Howes in the news
Amid all the hubbub over the Tour de France over the last month, I saw reference to an Alex Howes, born in Colorado in 1988, a rookie on the tour this year. You can read more about him in an interview here:
http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/07/ ... ris_338863
Does anyone know anything more about this man and his family?

Also, in East Windsor, Connecticut a Penelope Howes hit the news after her death when her relatives offered her organs for transplantation. Originally from Guyana in South America, Penelope's organs are very valuable to the "African-American" community in North America because their needs for transplanted organs are apparently greater than for the average person.
Penelope's story reminds us usefully of the benefit of donating organs at our death if they could be of use to others. Read more here:
http://news.hamlethub.com/eastwindsor/c ... ness-month

Here's a tip for researchers using un-indexed British parish registers on FamilySearch
This tip works well for Norfolk parish registers but may well work for other parts of the UK too.
Rather than leaf through parish registers one by one to look for the entry you want, try using http://www.freereg.org.uk/ first to see whether a transcription already exists for the particular event and parish you want (or indeed a neighbouring parish). That will give you a name and a register number which should make looking up the original images on familysearch so much easier.

If you'e not checked out FreeReg recently, it may be worth doing so. I note that their coverage for some counties has grown quite dramatically. Like many transcription services, though, it's not complete. So finding someone with the same name as your ancestor is not necessarily proof that you found the right one!

All the best
Paul
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