Howes your father? - December 2015
Posted: December 31st, 2015, 9:00 pm
Another year has passed, and a new one already begun on the far side of the world from me!
Joseph Thomas Leslie Howes - an update
Remember last month's story about the man who married six times? Well, two remarkable things came to light in December:
1) within 36 hours of my sending out the newsletter I had an email from the man's granddaughter! And, she had not seen my note! Her father died 30+ years ago and she was never really told much about the Howes family except that her grandfather had run off to sea and disappeared; so her grandmother had had him declared missing and legally dead so that she could re-marry. They had no contact except that at Christmas JTLH's children would receive gifts from Howes relatives. She was surprised to know the truth and her children had many laughs about it.
2) they had even more mirth when one of our research team found a seventh marriage . . . this time in Nova Scotia!
So, to summarize, JTL Howes married 7 times, six as a bachelor! And six of those marriages happened between 1931 and 1940 shortly before he died after a German U-boat strike. That was one busy (and naughty) man. See all the details, including six of the marriage certificates, here: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename
Puzzle Corner: a suffragette named Howes
If you are able to click on this link
http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/61005 ... rchResults, you will see that jut two days after Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested, on 12th February 1908, a Beatrice Howes was also arrested in Westminster, London. That's all we know. Can anyone identify this woman, please? Was she part of your family? Beatrice not being an unusual name at the time, it's not easy to figure out logically!
Year-end Report
We finished the year with 105,100 people in our database, having added another 1,400 people during the month. We have 1,120+ correspondents spread across 6 continents, about one-half of whom have shared information with us.
Longer-term correspondents will know that, given the main source of our name in Southern England, we think that one of our key measures of success is the number of Howes/House/etc marriages in England and Wales between the start of national registration in 1837 to 1950. There were 23,800 such marriages and we now know the identity of both partners in 15,850 of them - that's almost exactly two-thirds. So we are very much on the downslope regarding building the basic foundation of our study. Sadly, there are no reliable long-term checklists elsewhere or we would be using those too!
It's been a good year for publicity too. We have had magazine mentions in the UK and a big two page spread in a British local newspaper here: http://howesfamilies.com/histories/EDP.pdf. I made presentations in three US states and at WDYTYA?Live in Birmingham, England. With luck we should get some press mentions here in Florida soon too and I'm hoping for another UK magazine mention soon.
Can you help? Please!
We are strictly non-commercial. We don't like adverts on websites, particularly the modern intrusve ones, and cetainly don't want them at Howesfamilies.com! We do this because we love it, not for any reason of personal gain or advantage. Are you interested in helping? Here are three possible ways, though there are many others.
1) I fund the site out of my own resources and am happy to do so. I buy certificates fairly regularly and sometimes receive a contribution from a correspondent like you. But we now have a list close to a hundred of certificates we'd like to buy to answer various questions and hopefully join bits of families up together. Would you be interested in sponsoring one, or some? I'd be very happy to take donations to my paypal account in a currency of your choice!
2) Do you have a scientific bent or a particular interest in DNA? We have a DNA study project at FamilyTreeDNA (I will have a lot more to say about this next month) but it needs more energy input to try to make it grow. Would you be interested in working with me on that and in due course taking it on?
3) How about working through a data set, tracking families away from a single marriage, say for Ontario (or even just a county within Ontario), or working through a single newspaper trying to identify Howes families from references within? Happy to give you a project and teach you how we format our data.
Thanks EVERYONE for your support over the past nine years. We are a LOT closer to our goal than I expected.
Joseph Thomas Leslie Howes - an update
Remember last month's story about the man who married six times? Well, two remarkable things came to light in December:
1) within 36 hours of my sending out the newsletter I had an email from the man's granddaughter! And, she had not seen my note! Her father died 30+ years ago and she was never really told much about the Howes family except that her grandfather had run off to sea and disappeared; so her grandmother had had him declared missing and legally dead so that she could re-marry. They had no contact except that at Christmas JTLH's children would receive gifts from Howes relatives. She was surprised to know the truth and her children had many laughs about it.
2) they had even more mirth when one of our research team found a seventh marriage . . . this time in Nova Scotia!
So, to summarize, JTL Howes married 7 times, six as a bachelor! And six of those marriages happened between 1931 and 1940 shortly before he died after a German U-boat strike. That was one busy (and naughty) man. See all the details, including six of the marriage certificates, here: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename
Puzzle Corner: a suffragette named Howes
If you are able to click on this link
http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/61005 ... rchResults, you will see that jut two days after Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested, on 12th February 1908, a Beatrice Howes was also arrested in Westminster, London. That's all we know. Can anyone identify this woman, please? Was she part of your family? Beatrice not being an unusual name at the time, it's not easy to figure out logically!
Year-end Report
We finished the year with 105,100 people in our database, having added another 1,400 people during the month. We have 1,120+ correspondents spread across 6 continents, about one-half of whom have shared information with us.
Longer-term correspondents will know that, given the main source of our name in Southern England, we think that one of our key measures of success is the number of Howes/House/etc marriages in England and Wales between the start of national registration in 1837 to 1950. There were 23,800 such marriages and we now know the identity of both partners in 15,850 of them - that's almost exactly two-thirds. So we are very much on the downslope regarding building the basic foundation of our study. Sadly, there are no reliable long-term checklists elsewhere or we would be using those too!
It's been a good year for publicity too. We have had magazine mentions in the UK and a big two page spread in a British local newspaper here: http://howesfamilies.com/histories/EDP.pdf. I made presentations in three US states and at WDYTYA?Live in Birmingham, England. With luck we should get some press mentions here in Florida soon too and I'm hoping for another UK magazine mention soon.
Can you help? Please!
We are strictly non-commercial. We don't like adverts on websites, particularly the modern intrusve ones, and cetainly don't want them at Howesfamilies.com! We do this because we love it, not for any reason of personal gain or advantage. Are you interested in helping? Here are three possible ways, though there are many others.
1) I fund the site out of my own resources and am happy to do so. I buy certificates fairly regularly and sometimes receive a contribution from a correspondent like you. But we now have a list close to a hundred of certificates we'd like to buy to answer various questions and hopefully join bits of families up together. Would you be interested in sponsoring one, or some? I'd be very happy to take donations to my paypal account in a currency of your choice!
2) Do you have a scientific bent or a particular interest in DNA? We have a DNA study project at FamilyTreeDNA (I will have a lot more to say about this next month) but it needs more energy input to try to make it grow. Would you be interested in working with me on that and in due course taking it on?
3) How about working through a data set, tracking families away from a single marriage, say for Ontario (or even just a county within Ontario), or working through a single newspaper trying to identify Howes families from references within? Happy to give you a project and teach you how we format our data.
Thanks EVERYONE for your support over the past nine years. We are a LOT closer to our goal than I expected.