November 2014 - Howes that?

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

November 2014 - Howes that?

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. Happy new month. I seem to have spent a lot of time this month on puzzles! Not all of them are solved, by any means. So in case you are interested there are a few below.

Follow up about Howes village in Cambridgeshire
Correspondent Steve Howes has continued his research and uncovered an article from earlier this year in the Cambridge News:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/SLIDESH ... story.html
The article mentioned that the old settlement of Howes is likely soon to be built over by some University buildings and so is being excavated first. They have uncovered some very water courses which appear to be Roman irrigation channels, indicating that the settlement was very ancient indeed.

(Just one small caution for when you click on the link: the article is full of pop-up advertisements. Use the scroll bar at the right to go down through the article.)

Big Thanks
Wanted to offer big THANK YOUs to correspondents Richard Hows and Kelvin Searle. Richard studies his own surname and we collaborate from time to time. He sent me a file from the England and Wales birth registration index with over 500 names in it and I'm gradually working my way through them, putting them into families where we didn't have a record for them already, providing him with commentary to add to his work.

Kelvin kindly agreed to check through a parish marriage register in Norfolk, England, extract all the Howes entries and send the details to us. There were about a dozen or so marriages which he also supplemented with baptisms. What made this particularly helpful is that this particular church (Christ Church, part of St Clement parish in Norwich) is not one of those whose records the LDS church has copied and put online at FamilySearch.org.

If anyone else is able to help in this or a similar way, please do let me know! (Doesn't have to be Norfolk!)

James Howes 1827 of Warwickshire
This man is worthy of note because:
- he and many of his descendants lost the "s" on the end of their name. Didn't happen to everyone, though, and it didn't happen at the same time for the rest. It seems to have been a gradual evolution.
- he himself had his surname spelt 5 different ways during his life: Howes, House, Hows, How and Howe. I'm quite surprised that we haven't found him as a Howse yet!

Levi A Howes from Massachusetts
And while we are on the theme of surname spellings, I found it very interesting that even in the heartland of the Howes name in the US, Maassachusetts, in 1880 I found a Howes whose name was spelt as House by the enumerator. I know one swallow doesn't make a summer but it is at least another indication that House and Howes were pronounced more similarly in the past than today.

Harold (Farrington-) House of Murston, Kent
I have a friend in New Zealand who shares a common in interest in the old trading boats from the East Coast of England. Just last week, he sent me a link to a new booklet about the brick barges of the Medway river area in Kent. Reading through it I was fascinated because a John House had recorded an interview with his grandfather, Harold. Among other things he recorded how the customs and excise men could not figure out where Harold kept the booze he'd clearly smuggled in from his cross-channel foreign trips. They never found the hollow mast! Read more at:
http://www.flipsnack.com/WestmorelandCI ... t-cic.html and check out two more articles actually written by Harold at: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename.

Now, we have Harold in our database, but no descendants. Anyone know anything about this family, please?

Puzzle 2 - a family in the workhouse
During November a correspondent drew out attention to the fact that Ancestry.com had added records from the London workhouses, dealing with London's poorest. He pointed out that one family we had briefly found were also mentioned in these records. You can see everything we know about this family, a mother and five boys, here:
http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename

To be honest, there were times when I wondered whether we were looking at a Howes family at all but the name does occur three times. Can anyone deduce any more about these folks, please?

Puzzle 3 - Hannah Maria Futter
See: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename and you will see all we know: a Hannah Maria Howes marries Robert Eagleton in Norwich in 1885. She was a widow and the daughter of Edmund Futter. We've been racking our brains over this one, but perhaps we are missing something really obvious. Can you find Hannah before or after her marriage?
mardler
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Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: November 2014 - Howes that?

Post by mardler »

Thanks to correspondent Joan Salmon we already have a large part of the answer to puzzle #3 about Hannah Maria Futter.

Joan spotted that:
- a Hannah M Futter married John Tann in the parish church of St Lawrence in Norwich in 1840 (when she claimed to be 19 years old)
- then Charles Warren Faux in 1874 in St Clement, Norwich (then aged 44) and
- Charles died in 1879 aged 65

From the 1851 census we found that Hannah was born in Costessey (pron: Cossey). So we looked in the 1881 census for a Hannah Howes born there. Bingo! She was in our database already, with a Henry Howes at the Duke of Wellington pub in Wellington Lane, Norwich.

From that we found that:
- Henry married Anna Maria Faulks in Q3 1880 in Norwich
- he was already the landlord of the Wellington, having become so in 1874.
- he lost his licence for the pub in October 1881
- the only Henry of the right age who died in Norfolk between the 1881 census and 1885 (when Hannah married again) pegged out in Q4 1881 in Great Yarmouth, which would also explain why he lost his licence!

Now, it would be nice to know what happened to Hannah, but it's not crucial to our study!

Thank you, Joan.
Paul
mardler
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Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: November 2014 - Howes that?

Post by mardler »

Postscript to the postscript:
Just as there are very few new ideas in the world, it seems that there are very few new genealogical problems, too! The sharp-eyed Joan Salmon, still on the case, has found an extensive discussion on a rootschat message board by one of Hannah Maria's descendants. Hannah was even charged with bigamy and acquitted.

See:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/norfolk/ ... acquittal/

Fascinating
Paul
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