Hows your father? - August 2015

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

Hows your father? - August 2015

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. After a classic British bank holiday today (cold, windy and wet!) I returned home earlier today after a straight ten days of sailing on my beloved Norfolk Broads. Having also sailed for two weeks earlier in the month, I'm afraid that I have had very little time to devote to family history this month with the result that:
- we have added only 300 people, although I have a few files from our research team which I have yet to merge in
- I'm getting very backlogged with my correspondence. If you expected a reply from me recently and haven't had one, please do feel free to remind me.

Bringing families back together
We have reconnected two families who have drifted apart over the years and just this evening learned that I need to do it again. We like to do this as a service to those who register on our site. If we have connected you to a distant family member and something good has come from it, please do let me know.

EDP article
We did get some publicity for our study too. When our database exceeded 100,000 people, I sent a little press release to a few media outlets. Family Tree Magazine picked up the news and gave us two paragraphs, which had been the height of my expectation. A reporter from the local newspaper here in Norfolk, England gave me a call and we spoke for over half an hour. She then sent a photographer around. Imagine my surprise when on July 29, I opened the Eastern Daily Press and found a two-page spread! The reporter did a great job with the material I gave her, mostly with a Norfolk slant on things given their readership, and I have copied it to our website here:
http://howesfamilies.com/histories/EDP.pdf - caution: it's a large file and may take a while to load.

Visiting Norfolk
I've been fortunate this month too to meet a couple of Howeses whom I'd not met before and also learned that a correspondent had visited Norfolk and had been just a few miles from me here. If you ever do come to Norfolk in the summer (or Northern Florida in the winter) do get in touch. It's been great in the past to meet up with folks from Australia and New Zealand with whom I've corresponded.

Can you help?
Maybe you can't help but perhaps this website might give you a link to some newspapers which may have some information on your ancestors: http://www.theancestorhunt.com/blog/200 ... aper-links. Don't forget that newspapers around the world often contained information gleaned from other newspapers, just as I mentioned last month about the Bermuda newspaper which reprinted an article from Norfolk, England. So it's not always obvious where it's best to look. My own person favorite is the Brooklyn Eagle, which often had overseas news, and it's free online.

If you can help, pick a newspaper, check the Howes/Howse/House/Hows/Howze occurrences, and see if you can figure out who each person was. Is that person in our database already? If not, can you figure out a tree for them?
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Hows your father? - August 2015

Post by mardler »

POSTSCRIPT
Two things:
In my haste last night I forgot to mention that I will be in Boston, Massachusetts speaking at the NEHGS on September 24-25. If you are in the Boston area and would like to meet, do let me know. I will have some free time during the day and possibly early evenings, though I don't eactly know yet.

I just learned this morning that there is a handy new search engine which only looks at British Newspapers, although news coverage is frequently worldwide. You can find it here:
http://www.philb.com/nationaluknewspapers.html

Best regards
Paul
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Hows your father? - August 2015

Post by mardler »

PPS just in case anyone is interested in coming along, I see that the information for the Boston seminar is here:
http://shop.americanancestors.org/produ ... rough=true
Regards
Paul
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