August 2011 - House that?

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

August 2011 - House that?

Post by mardler »

Happy new month, folks. Every year, I spend a lot of the summer sailing competitively in my native Norfolk and the pace of our growth slows a bit. This year was no exception! Compounding that was that my family history program stopped working mid-month. Consequently no further updates to individual information are possible until I return to the US next week and can re-install the software. We also have a backlog of change suggestions and one or two GED file submissions. Please bear with us in the interim.

Howes Family Association
Last month, we announced a major change in the website by adding photographs (see reminder below). The month, we are VERY pleased to announce that HowesFamilies.com has become the host for the Howes Family Association's website, continuing our quest to be the resource for people with our name, worldwide. The HFA is a group for descendents of Thomas Howes and Mary Burr who emigrated to the US in 1636 aboard the Mayflower II. Welcome, folks. I hope to attend your convention next year and meet many of you in person.

In the next few hours I will add a link to the HFA pages. Meantime, if you are interested, go to http://www.howesfamilies.com/hfa and check them out.

Progress
Despite our slow month, we:
  • added a further 800 individuals to the file in the month
  • have started adding photographs and linking pictures of (mostly Norfolk, so far) churches to places of baptism and marriage. Got an ancestor who married or was baptized at Wymondham Abbey? Take a look at their record and tell us what you think. For Norfolk, we must thank Simon Knott, webmaster of the simply excellent http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk site who has given us permission to use his images.
  • Geo-coded several hundred more locations so that every location used by ten or more events now has a location and will be mapped on individual pages.
And, of the 24,000 House/Howes.Howse/Hows marriages in England and Wales between 1837 and 1950, we now know the identity of both spouses for over 7,500. That's a pretty good indicator of our progress to date.

A reminder . . . .
Do you have any certificates, or a picture of your Howes/Howse/Hows/House ancestor, or even a picture of a church (or register office) where they married? If so, please send them to photos "at" howesfamilies.com.

Guild of One-Name Studies
You may recall that this study is done within the auspices of the Guild. I cannot say enough good things about the Guild, the knowledge of its members, their willingness to share it and the cameraderie of the membership. One of the more obvious benefits to members is the Guild's series of “Marriage challenges”. A member, or small group, selects a registration district in England and Wales and volunteers to collect details for any marriages in that area requested by other members, direct from the parish registers deposited at the local register office. They do this voluntarily. It's marvellous.

In the past month or two, we have received challenge results for nearly 150 marriages from the following districts: Blaby, Daventry, Hardingstone, Hastings, Sturmer, Towcester, Wallingford and Winslow. There are further challenge results due soon for Kettering and Northampton, among other areas. Bottom line: particularly if you have ancestors from Northamptonshire, we will have almost a complete set of marriages soon, which will enable us to fill in many gaps. Check back over the next few weeks as we add these details and see whether we can fill in some gaps for you.

Last but not least, each marriage challenge received saves the £9.25 cost of buying the certificate. If you have ever thought of your own one-name study, this alone justifies the minor annual subscription to the Guild

All the best
Paul
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