Going round the HOWESes - February 2017

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

Going round the HOWESes - February 2017

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Hello everyone. I've been SO busy this month that there is a dearth of items in this monthly newsletter. Let me explain! But first, big thanks to the four people who wrote back within 24 hours of my last note to say that HOWES Valley in New South Wales was originally HOWE's Valley! It was named after a John Howe, who is rumoured to have come from Redbourne in Hertfordshire, England.

My month
I took time out in Salt Lake City to attend the three days of RootsTech. I got in some good learning and met some old friends. There were some big announcements at the conference, e.g.:
- "picture matching" by Myheritage, where they can now match pictures from different trees and bring more families together
- the release of several catholic diocese marriage records in both England and North America, with plenty more to come.
I was also able to put in some time at the Family History Library.

As a result of that I have two initiatives under way, when I get time for them!
1) Clarke County, Mississippi. Remember Sala Udin whom I mentioned in a previous newsletter? I have decided to work harder on reconstructing the Howze & House families in that county and I've made a little progress already. There are a few people in census records named Howse, Howes and even Haughs and they may all be variants of each other.

2) Mayflower descendants - occasionally I get asked about Mayflower descendancy. While in Salt Lake City I made copies of all the Howes entries in the "Silver Books" published by the Mayflower Society. The Silver Books contain genealogies of the first five generations of Mayflower descendants. Entry to the Mayflower Society depends upon linking back to one of these descendants. So as I enter up what I found, I will make a clear mark against each of the individuals in our database who match. There were one or two volumes missing from their set which I wil catch up on when I have the opportunity.

I also managed to download over 2,000 new images from Fold3, being mostly World War 1 and World War 2 draft registration cards, and a good few newspaper articles only available in the Family History Library. Goodness knows when I'll get the time to enter them all, but I will be focussing on Mississippi when I do get to them!

By the way, before I leave the topic of RootsTech, I was told by another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies that there was another man named Howes present. I checked at the front desk and they told me that there were actually four other people registered named Howes at the conference and two named House. Sadly, not one of them had registered on the RootsTech app and my request for the RootsTech staff to forward an email to them was refused. So I couldn't contact them. Is one of you reading this?!

Hull Trawlers
Do you have an ancestor from Hull in Yorkshire who served aboard ship? If so, you might be interested in this website: hulltrawler.net. The site owner contacted me last weekend asking if I knew much about Ellis Nutter Howes, who married as Alexander Howes. I told him what I knew and did a bit of extra research for him finding his merchant seaman's record card at FindMyPast.com. The site owner was helpful in return, telling me of the death of Ellis in Kirkwall on the Orkney Islands in Scotland. In return, I promoted his site with other members of the Guild and within an hour or so, a very helpful member from Orkney was kind enough to send me a copy of Ellis's actual death certificate. Fabulous example of collaboration by all concerned. That's why I love this hobby!

Three forthcoming events
I will be speaking this coming Saturday about "Irish Genealogy from your Armchair" and "The Joy of Surnames" (basically an introduction to One-Name Studies) in Jacksonville, Florida at the North Florida Genealogical Conference (https://nfgenealogyconference.org/). If you are in the area, do stop by - it's a fun day with, I think, 70 other speakers beyond me.
Then I expect to be at the Guild of One-Name Studies stand again at the WhoDoYouThinkYouAre? Live event in Birmingham, England from April 6 - 8. If you are coming, please do stop by and say, "Hello." It's been great the past few years to see correspondents from this study and put faces to names.
In between, I will be at the Guild of One-Name Studies annual conference near Southampton in England. It is open to the public and if you have an interest in meeting with some seriously obsessed genealogists, then this is the place for you! Just in case anyone is interested, check out the conference schedule here: http://one-name.org/guild-conference-agm/.

And Finally . . .
We made a good deal of progress this month, adding over 1,400 people, finishing at over 118,250. The biggest percentage increase in any surname was for HOWZE, which had a sudden burst of speed to overtake Smith and stands just shy of 750!
I still have several files from Ian Howes, Mike Howes and John Howe to integrate, though my schedule is very busy this month, as you can see! I'll do what I can.
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