Putting our Howse in order - May 2020

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

Putting our Howse in order - May 2020

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. Since last month's newsletter, I flew to England to help take care of my mother who is very poorly. Fortunately, I arrived a few days before the British government imposed a mandatory 14-day quarantine restriction. Even though not subject to the regime, I've been close to nobody other than my immediate family, honest!

My correspondence continues at a fairly hectic pace, and my co-workers have been very active during the month too. Together we added 1,500 people to the database during May, finishing up at 169,539 people. For sure, in June we will pass 170,000 people. I even managed to work through another 14 pages of the Howes Genealogy book, describing the descendants of Thomas Howes and Mary Burr, who arrived on Cape Cod in 1637.

yDNA testing
At the risk of boring everyone else, I want to return to the topic of DNA and the British origins of that Thomas Howes, a mystery that has intrigued the US Howes clan for at least 130 years. In the past few weeks we have found a reasonably close match between two male descendants of Thomas Howes and another man in our DNA database whose family hails from the Norfolk village of Brandon Parva (or Little Brandon), just West of Norwich. The two American men are tenth cousins, each descending from a different son of the original Thomas (Joseph and Jeremiah). The matching between each other and with the British man is tantalizingly close but not close enough to be definitive.

Now, yDNA mutates a little as it transfers down a male line, but not a huge amount. So, to see just how much mutation that has gone on I'm calling for more volunteers to come forward and take a yDNA test, pretty please, if you come from any of the following groups:
- any male Howes descendant of Thomas Howes but particularly if you come from the third son of Thomas, Thomas junior.
- any male Howes descendant of the line through any of the men named Anthony Howes of Brandon Parva or Wymondham.
- In particular, we are very interested in direct male descendants of:
-- James Howes 1764-1855 of Wymondham, Norfolk.
-- Samuel Howes 1768-1815 of New York, other than through his son, Bailey
-- Ezekiel Howes 1763-1833 of Massachusetts, other than through his son, Thomas.
Is there anyone out there, please? Cost will be of the order of US$120 or UK£95, for a basic test which I can obtain relatively cheaply through the Guild of One-Name Studies. Please note, though that all three men who almost match each other have upgraded to 111-marker tests. If you can afford it, please go straight for gold!

And another thing about Thomas Howes and his male descendants
Long before the time of the original book into the US Howes genealogy (1892) a graphical family tree was produced in 1859 showing the male descendants of Thomas Howes. You can see and buy a copy on archival paper from the Dennis Historical Society, here:
https://www.dennishistoricalsociety.org ... amily-tree

However, correspondent Leslie Ray Sears has been working hard with members of his family to produce an updated version of the tree. He shared a copy with me and I have placed a copy on our website, here: https://howesfamilies.com/showmedia.php?mediaID=3702
Be cautious! It's a 5MB file. You can expand it using the magnifier at the top of the image and then move about by click and drag. But here is a much smaller version to give you a flavor of it:
HowesTree2020.jpg
HowesTree2020.jpg (83.26 KiB) Viewed 2210 times
I can't imagine how much work must have gone into making that. Thank you, Leslie and family.

Sundry Howes/Howse/House web links
Leonard John Howes
With the 75th anniversary of VE Day in May, there was a raft of commemorative materials on the web. With our daily automated web search we spotted an article in the Harrogate Advertiser with a really good commemorative picture of Leonard John Howes, now aged 103 and two family members and a series of old photographs showing Leonard's service with the Post Office and the Army Royal Corps of Signals. With a little research on facebook, we made contact with his family and obtained a copy of the picture, which now sits on Leonard's record. Here's a copy of it: https://howesfamilies.com/showmedia.php ... nkID=12488. It's worth reading Leonard's story here:
https://www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/h ... ay-2849346
Thank you for your service, sir.

Shaun Howes
I make no apologies for being a long-term fan of Norwich City Football Club, still in the English Premier League (just!). My very first game was in 1959 when my grandfather took me to see the great Sir Stanley Matthews (who was playing for the opposition). ANyway, that's another story. The Canaries' women's football team has just appointed a new coach, called Shaun Howes. See: https://www.canaries.co.uk/News/2020/ma ... ead-coach/. We have several Shaun's in our database, but I'm not sure whether he is among them. Does anyone know him?

Sorry, I didn't spot anything in the news this month for Howse or House names. I've explained in the past about the latter. There's just no point in a daily search for the name House as so much other material is thrown up that it's pointless. However, if anyone would like to bring a particular news item to my attention, please drop me a line

Puzzle corner
I've said before that sometimes even when we buy a certificate, we still can't figure out who the person was and how to tie him or her in to a wider family group. This one is a classic of the kind. Take a look at the birth certificate of Wilfred Leonard Howes, here:
https://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php ... ee=Onename
It shows a father, deceased by the child's birth and a mother claiming to be married. We can't find a single Alfred Horace Howes anywhere. It's possible he existed, perhaps from a British colony?, but we can't see it. We can't find a marriage of the mother Ada Sweet to anyone named Howes. However, a year after Wilfred's birth she married a John Tubb under the name of Ada Hayers. We can't find a marriage of an Ada Sweet to anyone named Hayers either!
So, can anyone shed any kind of light onto any aspect of this, please? In particular we'd like to know the Howes connection. Any unravelling of any part of the mystery may help us get there. Thinking caps on, team!

About that railway photo
A researcher of a Bristol Howes family shared it with me. In the late 19th century railroads were being built all over the world and British railway engineers were highly sought after. This particular railway was from La Guaira to Caracas in Venezuela and was engineered by the husband of a British woman named Lucy Jane Howes. Lucy's younger sister, Mary Emma, went out to Caracas and married the Locomotive Superintendent. The latter got a job in Mexico where Mary, sad to say, died. Another sister, Dora, married in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A younger-still brother, Henry, also lived in Argentina for a while but moved to Brazil where his descendants still live today. Yet another brother died aboard ship in Fort William, Calcutta, India. Quite an international family and amazingly so for the time!

Free stuff
During these strange times, several providers are increasing their free content to subscribers. In the last two weeks I watched sessions put on by the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, for instance. My Heritage is putting on a LOT of extra content, all free. So I'm reproducing part of an email I had from them last week:
"During these challenging times, MyHeritage is constantly looking for new ways to help people move forward with their genealogical research from the comfort and safety of their homes.
"To that end, MyHeritage has been hosting an Ask The Expert series on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1 P.M. U.S. Eastern time. Each 30-minute session explores a different subject and gives you the opportunity to learn from top experts in the field and ask your questions live. For the updated June 2020 schedule and registration links, visit https://bit.ly/MyHAskTheExpert "
Here is a link to a prior session, from which you can link to other recordings. I hope you find something of interest.
https://education.myheritage.com/webina ... e=hs_email

That's all, folks! Thank you for your continued support
Paul
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Putting our Howse in order - May 2020

Post by mardler »

A gold star is due to correspondent Tim Howes from Brisbane in Australia, who meticulously figured out the answer to our puzzle.
Ada Sweet was the sister of Maria Sweet who was already in our database, having married an Alfred Argent Howes. Ada's son's father's name was stated to be Alfred Horace Howes and we strongly believe that the two men were one and the same person. The database will be updated to reflect that.
Paul
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