Putting our Howze in order - March 2020

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

Putting our Howze in order - March 2020

Post by mardler »

Hi folks. I hope you have a happy and, most importantly, a healthy month.
Here in Florida, we have faced increasing restrictions on our movements because of the spread of the virus originally from Wuhan. The restrictions are worse than those in some places and not as bad as some, I feel sure. Things that we took for granted just a couple of weeks ago, like the pleasure of seeing our grandchildren, are denied us. All that is bad enough for us retirees, but the people I have the most sympathy for are those folks who just a month ago thought they were secure in their jobs, whether employed or self-employed. For many of those folks, the world has changed even more dramatically. To those folks, I offer the sailor's wish: "Fair winds and following seas". We all hope we can return to normality as soon as possible.

It will take a little while, however, as the good folks at RootsTech have already decided to cancel the repeat of their show in London this coming November, which I announced last month. Given the logistics of getting a large number of people from across the world into one place at one time, it's entirely understandable, even if regrettable.

Monthly progress
One of the few benefits of not being able to travel or even play a round of golf, has been that we can work more on genealogy! And the results are in! We added almost 1,800 people during March, leaving us at 166,730 people.

We've now added everyone from the first 200 pages of the Howes Genealogy book discussed in previous months' newsletters, continuing our pace of 50 pages per month.

I've also taken the opportunity of a free website offered by the Guild of One-Name Studies to its members and have set up a duplicate mirror site at howes.one-name.net. It doesn't have all of the pages we offer at howesfamilies.com, but it does contain all of the data and analysis tools on every one of the 166,730 people, though without the images. There's at least one hour every week when one site is being updated. If you find that one is unavailable, switch to the other one.

The other big benefit of having a Guild operated website is that it's both an immediate and permanent backup for this site, into which our team has put thousands of hours and to which over half of our correspondents have contributed. If I were to walk under the proverbial bus and/or howesfamilies.com goes down for some reason, howes.one-name.net will continue for as long as the Guild survives.

Howes Genealogy - the book
We try to think about what we are doing while we work, not just copy out material. It's quite amazing to me just what a sea-faring lot the Howes family on Cape Cod was. A quick search of our database reveals 180 or so men named Howes who were Captains, most of those being of vessels and most of those coming from Yarmouth, Dennis and Harwich on the Cape. It does not include all those men who were mere mariners. I'm sure, too, that we will find more Captains in subsequent pages!

We've also found a few more Howes connections as we have gone through so far. For instance, Asa Shiverick Jr, was the son of Susannah Howes, noted in the book. Also noted was that he married Betsey Crowell Howes (nee Sears) as her second husband. Not noted, however, is that as his third wife, he married Ruth Tobey, the daughter of Jonathan Howes Tobey, himself the son of a Howes woman. It is, I think, a benefit of our following the children and grandchildren of Howes women, not possible to have done in a book the size of Howes Genealogy, and I mean no disrespect at all to Colonel Bob Howes, whose work was both comprehensive and excellent.

Help wanted, pretty please!
Thanks to correspondent Jenni from Adelaide in Australia, I learned of the fantastic online archive from the library service of Tasmania. You can see it here: https://librariestas.ent.sirsidynix.net ... _AU/names/?. It includes a wide array of information, including births, deaths, marriages and wills, AND a vast array of other material. There are no fewer than 2757 articles for the name HOUSE and only a thousand for HOWES. Anyone fancy picking a name and trying to build a family or two for us, or at least cataloguing what's there for us?

While I'm on the topic of help wanted, I did want to note that our certificate budget is now almost exhausted again. If you can spare us a little cash to help with our certificate buying program please do drop me a line. Happy to accept payment in US$, UK£ or virtually anything via paypal. I will usually match any contributions received.

New tool offered by FamilySearch
I talked a little last month about FamilySearch and how the folks there are adding millions of un-indexed digital images and working on handwriting recognition technology. While the handwriting tech is not yet ready, FamilySearch has offered a tool which should help people navigate more quickly to find the record they want even if the record set is not yet indexed. I'm afraid that I have not yet had the time to look at it myself. Anyway, I thought I would share it in case anyone is interested. https://media.familysearch.org/familyse ... rd-images/

Do let me know how you get on.

Howes people in the news
-- we get to see a LOT of obituaries in our work. This one grabbed my attention. Here are the opening words: "Aged 76 of Laytonsville, MD, Tommy “The Who” Howes, the Man, the Myth, the Legend, died March 23, 2020 as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for over seven decades fueled by fast cars, Jack Daniel’s, Schlitz and Miller Lite." Good for him! You can read the rest here: https://www.fredericknewspost.com/obitu ... 76dcd.html

-- At the other end of the age scale, here is Skyler Howes, motor cyclist, who is having a lot of success with long-distance cross country races. https://dirtbikemagazine.com/skyler-how ... -the-wrap/ How he finds the guts, and the money, amazes me!

-- https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/lasti ... -festival/ Alan Howes was a member of Erdington Rugby Club for over 50 years and was a huge proponent of junior Rugby. His club now has a memorial tournament in his name.

Puzzle Corner
We buy certificates to answer questions and join up one family with another. Sometimes, though, even knowing the parents of the parties, their ages, where they lived and what they did for a living just aren't enough for us to figure out who the Howes people were. I'm a great believer that four eyes are better than two. I've said many times that it's great to work with my cousin, Ian, because he looks at problems differently to me. So, all that being said, here's a doozy of a puzzle: who was John Frederick Howes who married Mary Tresham in 1901? You'll find them, and their marriage certificate, here: https://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php ... ee=Onename

Sometimes, the answer is way more simple than I thought. I missed something really obvious Go on, embarrass me! If anyone solves it, I'll leave a reply to this note.

Stay healthy, people
Paul
mardler
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Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Putting our Howze in order - March 2020

Post by mardler »

Many thanks and congratulations to correspondent Tim Howes from Queensland who has correctly solved the first part of our puzzle, that is where Mary Tresham and John Howes were in 1901 and 1911.
Mary was definitely from Rotherham. John appears to have come from Islington born between 1865 and 1869, though we still cannot find a suitable candidate. Next website update will be Sunday April 12 when you can see what Tim found for us so far!
Paul
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