Putting our Howse in order - October 2023

[mardler]

Hello everyone. Happy new month. Started your Christmas shopping yet?

Our monthly progress
We had a slight change of emphasis this month, as we were helping people from all over the world (Australia, England, Ireland, Latvia and USA comme immediately to mind) find their Howes, House, Howse, etc ancestors! We added over 900 people, finishing at 208,506 people.

How we spend our time has its trade-offs, of course, and while we did make some progress with our huge marriage project, we didn't get that far. We have now nearly finished 1905. Progress by year is inevitably slower as the number of marriages in our file increases year by year. Just looking at England and Wales, for example, in 1838 there are 84 marriages in our file, By 1905, the number increases to 272!

We've added lots of new information for several thousand marriages. If you've not looked at our file for details of your own ancestors recently, I'd encourage you to do so. You may find more information. One of our long-term metrics is just to look at marriages for people named Howes/etc from 1837 to 1980. We have identified 33,752 such, of which we have identified both partners for nearly 27,500, and are now happy to say that we know date and place for over 11,000 of them, a very large increase on where we were just a few months ago.

Our Latvian quest
Since last month's newsletter, we have found a few more details on the English, William Howes, who worked in Denmark and then moved on to Latvia and Belarus. Turns out he was already in our file! He was from Besthorpe in Norfolk, married Eleanor Ibbitt in Tempsford in Bedfordshire where he was working on the railway. They had one child in England, and another in Denmark, where Eleanor died shortly thereafter. The two children where then sent back to their maternal grandparents. Then began the story I related last month. Here is William's record: https://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php ... ee=Onename. You can see that he named his father on his marriage record as James Howes, but we haven't yet identified that James, assuming there was one!

Howes in the News
-- Jack Howes, of Florida and the University of Maryland
Anyone else out there interested in US College Football? Have you noticed a Jack Howes, both kicking and punting for the University of Maryland? He's in our database (for once!). We can trace his ancestors back 13 whole generations to Thomas Howes and Mary Burr, via their son, Joseph. His family represents an almost classic American story, moving from Massachusetts to Maine for many generations, then Iowa in the late 1800s, then Nebraska and lastly Florida from the late 1940s. See: https://umterps.com/sports/football/ros ... owes/11018
Side note: Jack's grandfather and great-grandfather both had connections to my own local city of St Augustine.

- Simon Howes - the Transatlantic rower
Remember this man, whom we featured earlier this year? He was rowing to raise money to protect the Red Squirrel population of the Isle of Wight. Most of the red squirrels in the rest of England have been overrun by their North American grey counterparts, and only a few pockets survive. Simon's herculean effort has raised a massive amount of money for the little furry creatures. Good job, sir!
For a few more details, and a picture, see: https://umterps.com/sports/football/ros ... owes/11018

- Leonard Howes turns 107
Another person we've featured in the past is Leonard Howes, who turned 107 this month. There were several articles about him in the British press of which this was just one:
https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/20 ... -turns-107
In some of the others Leonard attributes his longevity to a daily bowl of Shredded Wheat, washed down with lashings of milk and sugar. Side note: it was Henry Alonzo House who invented the machine which makes Shredded Wheat (see: https://howesfamilies.com/people.php?id=17)!

- Michelle Howes wins world Ironman Championship in Hawaii
Check out this South African lady who beat out 200 other competitors in her age group to win the world title this month.
https://www.heraldlive.co.za/sport/2023 ... e-in-kona/
Does anyone know this person's family, please? She is not yet in our database.

Howes impostors
Correspondent David Hardy drew my attention to a recent Tweet about a James Howes and his wife who ran the White Horse pub in Poplar, East London in 1745, though all was not what it seemed. Turns out that James's real name was Mary East! I was able to track down the origin of this story at the London pubs website, here: https://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Popl ... orse.shtml. Unfortunately, although it's a really interesting story and fascinating that the women could keep up appearances for 35 years, since neither of them was actually named Howes we can't include them in our study.

That's all this month, folks. Thanks for your continued support.
Paul