Man about the House - April 2022

[mardler]

Hello everyone. Wherever you are, I hope it’s warmer than it is here. Since I came to my summer home in Norfolk at the beginning of the month it’s been bitterly cold with grey skies. Temperatures barely reach 50 (that’s 10 in new money) and tomorrow may not even reach that. If you read my newsletters from last year, you will see that I had the same complaint then! Whatever has happened to global warming? The locals have a saying for it, “Tha’s a lazy wind, bor. Tha's soo lazy, that doon't goo round yer. That goo roight throo yer!" (Poor spelling approximates the accent)

Our monthly progress
This month we added only 734 new people to the database, finishing with 194,617 people, a little less than average, but I’m still happy. My friend who was sending me images of the 1921 census from the UK national Archives in Kew went berserk and sent me so many that our source count for the 1921 census doubled in the month and now already exceeds that for its Canadian 1921 counterpart, which has been around for many years. One of the key facts is that in adding all this information, I've only found three marriages that weren't already in our file. It gives me great confidence that our 19th and early 20th century family structures are nearing completion, at least for England and Wales.
My friend tells me that he won’t be able to visit the National Archives all summer. Is there anyone reading this who lives close enough to go there and download some images for us?
I also want to say a big thank you to correspondent, Sue, who has been working with us for several years on the early Howes/Howse/House families of Gloucestershire AND correspondent Bob, who has been working with us on 18th century Norfolk families. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

1950 US census
We also took a look at the US census for 1950, FREE to view at 1950census.archives.gov. Until the transcription of names improves, it will be relatively difficult to find the person you are looking for unless you know where they are. Ancestry, MyHeritage and SteveMorse.org have all developed tools to enable people to be found more easily. So if you are having trouble, I recommend using one or more of these.
In my first foray, I went to a county where I knew there would be people with our name: Barnstable County, Massachusetts – that’s Cape Cod, in case you didn’t know. I found 72 Howes households there, though I haven’t yet transcribed them all! I’m curious: has anyone reading this found their family? If so

No news is good news?
As you know, we have a daily news feed from Google, telling us of people named Howes who've been in the news. I won't say that there was nothing in April's feed, but it was pretty much “more of the same”: corporate news, sports news and news about people we’ve already reported on.

No noose is good noose?
(Sorry about that!) Back in July 2015, I wrote about a news article I had seen in a Bermuda newspaper from 1788 about a John Howes, who was the “publick executioner” of Norwich, England. He had read his own obituary in the local newspaper and offered to “perform the ceremony of his office” upon the offending scribe! You can see more detail here: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=137&p=219
I tried very hard to find out more about this man, but to no avail. The good folks at the Norfolk Record Office who normally try hard to help had not a clue about how I might even find out more. I just filed it at the back of my mind.

Then, just a few days ago, while looking for news about another John Howes, I happened upon this piece in the Norfolk Chronicle of From Norfolk Chronicle of 4 Feb 1792: "This county is likely to experience a loss. for some time, at least, and perhaps at that time when we can least bear it, by the present confinement of John Howes, the finisher of the law for this county, who for want of sureties in a case of bastardy, is obliged to reside in Wymondham Bridewell." Bad boy, huh?

So now I have a few other leads to follow. You have to like that euphemism, though: “finisher of the law”.

Have a good May, folks
Paul