Going round the HOWSes - April 2018

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

Going round the HOWSes - April 2018

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Happy new month, everyone. I wish I kept a proper research report like we are supposed to! Every month, I get to the end and find as now that we've added another 900 people and yet, if you ask me where or how, I'd have a tough time describing everything we'd done! I think part of it is that I'm the one who interacts with you, our customers, and so I have to go where you go. Just in the past 24 hours, I've looked at Canadian, Australian, British, Irish and American records for particular families that folks like you have written in about or, in a couple of cases, volunteers have transcribed wills or rebuilt families. It's keeping me busy and I enjoy it!

We've finished the month with 132,468 people in our database in 3,127 unrelated family groups. During the month too, we increased the number of other One-Name Studies from which we have had some help to 134. Our goal is to get that number to 200 by the end of 2018 and we are well on track. Why have such a goal? As a prior chairman I aim to demonstrate just how collaborative Guild members are and even so far, the results are proving me right.

By the way, a Guild member wrote to me recently to say he has a Paul Howes in his study! That particular Paul Howes has an A as his middle initial and married in Norwich, Norfolk in 1995. Anyone know who that was?

Quick plug for the Guild!
Three possible ways that Guild members might be able to help you:
- FamilySearch Genealogies: Guild members have their own section there and frequently appear in search results. Indeed I keep promising to put our database there too, and I will! The folks at FamilySearch have commented positively on the quality of Guild members' work and treat us as a reliable source. I hope that our work here does not detract from that feeling when we do go online.
- The Guild Website: www.one-name.org. If you have a relatively uncommon name in your background, particularly if it's a British origin name, do go to the Guild site and type that surname into the search box. You may get lucky and find a Guild member studying your name. If so, you'll be able to fill in a contact form and send them a direct message. Perhaps the Guild member can help you break through your brick wall or perhaps you can help them. You never know. It's worth checking non-British names too, although your chances of success are lower. The Guild has a British origin and thus a high proportion of members studying British names but there are now over 100 names from elsewhere under study too.
- Guild Members' Websites Project - Guild members are able to preserve their work by taking a free website at one-name.net. If you do a web search for an ancestor's name and find a reference to [yoursurname].one-name.net, do take a look. Over 2 million names are now preserved at members websites in rebuilt families.

Buttling for the gentry
Earlier this month, the British newspaper, the Observer, published an article from its archives of nearly 50 years ago. It was about Edward Howes a butler to Sir Michael Duff at his house in North Wales. It was a fascinating glimpse into a life that by then was very nearly passed, and since reproduced on TV in shows like Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey. As I write this I recall that an actor named Thomas Howes was in the cast of the latter! Anyway, check out Edward's story here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... r-saw-1971 and Edward's record here: http://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php? ... ee=Onename.
And, as a bonus, while researchign Edward, we found in the archives of the BBC a series of articles by Edward's son about life on the estate. You can read them here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/wales/archiv ... -howes.pdf.

Not quite a shotgun divorce!
Actor Russell Crowe was recently involved in a messy divorce and needed to raise money. One of the items in the auction was a boxed pair of duelling pistols signed by "F House". They look old and Sothebys says that they are 18th century but I'm wondering whether they might have been made by Frank House of Woodbury in Butler County, Kentucky, whose work we have shown before in this newsletter. Is there an antique gun specialist among us who can say whether there was an older F House, gunsmith of quality? Anyhow, they sure look beautiful and I'm not surprised they made $32,000, about four times their estimate. Russell Crowe made $3.7 million from the auction. To see more pictures of the pistols, click here: https://www.sothebysaustralia.com.au/lot/AU0822/166

Moments of amusement
In today's world, you have to take humour wherever you can find it. I'm always amused to see people called "Unoccupied House" in census records and the occasional "Empty House". I even once obtained a search result at FamilySearch of "Henry House of Plantagenet" - not one of the better quality entries in the old IGI! We have a dozen people in our database called Wendy House (North American readers may not know that a Wendy house is a child's playhouse, big enough for children to play inside). However, April marks the first time we have found a Green House! He was born in Tennessee, but we found him in a census in 1850 in Virginia. What other amusing names do we have in our database? I do recall Olive Blanche Howes. Who else have you seen?
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