Putting our Hows in order - November 2023

[mardler]

Hello folks. Happy new month. For those of us who celebrated Thanksgiving this month, I hope you had plenty to give thanks for. I know I did. During November my younger son and his wife were blessed with their first child. For us it was our fourth granddaughter and second this year! Mrs H and I flew to Massachusetts to spend a couple of weeks with the young parents and share some of the housework load. Precious family time.

Howes in the news
Debbie Howes from Johannesburg
Who knew there are world championships for pole dancing? I didn't. Well there are, and they were recently held in Poland. Last month we featured a South African woman winning an Iron Man World championship. This month, it's another South African woman world champion. Take a look at the pictures in the linked article. Debbie has amazing flexibility.
https://www.citizen.co.za/comaro-chroni ... onships-2/

Sarah Agaton Howes from Minnesota
The US state of Minnesota has decided to retire it's current state flag and asked for submissions of new designs. Sarah, a member of the Ojibwe tribe, is a graphic artist whom we have featured in prior newsletters. Her flag design is one of the six finalists. To me, it seems both bold and subtle with the lines at each end, representing native tribes and counties, making it look as much like a rug with tassles as a flag. So we wish her all success and hope to have good news to report after the decision is make at the end of this month.
See the six final designs here and vote if you want!
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/11/2 ... esota-flag

Name change in real time!
I found this marriage register entry during my project.

LGHowes19050420.jpg (208.9 KiB) Viewed 663 times

What makes it particularly interesting is that signatures of the bride and her father who witnessed use different spellings: Howes and Howse. It's more remarkable since it happens in 1905, well after mass education had begun in England. Worth noting too that this event happened in Swindon in the upper Thames valley. I've mentioned many times that this is the area where all three most common spellings of our name are used almost interchangeably.
It's just rare to see multiple spellings on the same document.

DNA testing
It's been a while since I asked whether there are any Howes/House/Howse/etc men out there who might consider taking a yDNA test and right now the price is right to bring the matter up again. Please consider taking such a test, especially if, like me, you've run up against a brick wall in your direct male line paper-based research. It's a great potential way to find others with whom you share the same past ancestry and provide a way to focus on a particular area for further research, if you find someone with whom you match. The more men we can get to take a test, the more is the chance that we will find useful information from matches.
To buy a test, by all means go direct to FTDNA.com or help out the Guild of One-Name Studies (a UK charity) by buying through them at this link: https://one-name.org/dna-kits-available-from-the-guild/. The price in pounds is currently £65.00, though you can also pay in USD, AUD and Euros. Whichever way you go, please specify that you want to join the Howes/House/Howe project.

Family Reunions
I saw this report in a West Virginia newspaper a while back about a Howes family reunion. https://www.theintermountain.com/life/r ... reunion-2/
It make me think. If you are having a reunion, please do let me know. I'm happy to publicize it and also report on it, particularly if you can share a picture or two.

Monthly update
We excelled ourselves this month, adding over 900 people to our file, finishing on 209,432 and adding more information to hundreds of others.
Work continues on my huge marriage project. I’m now well into 1908. It won’t be long now before online marriage register availability decreases rapidly, making progress much faster. The file of marriages that we will ultimately output to the Guild of One-Name Studies is getting very close to 48,500.

That's all for November, folks. There are several holidays coming up this month. Whether you celebrate all or just some, I hope you get in some decent family time with your loved ones. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Paul