May 2009

[mardler]

Strange month, thrill seekers. Periods of intense activity interspersed with periods of nothing while I got stuck into a new job at work.

Thanks everybody
Major news this month is that “We won an award!” Every year, the Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS) has a set of awards for publicising one-name studies run by members. There were 43 entries in the website category and we won third prize – yay! Not bad for a site that has been up all of six months. Thanks for sharing the vision, everyone, especially to those who have shared data and even more to those who are helping to transcribe additional data. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

What else has happened?
- Dave has started with the death index from England and Wales. We now have a list of deaths up to 1870 and will place it online soon. Remember, to see births and marriages, go to:
http://www.one-name.org/archives/howes.html

- I’ve started taking data from FreeReg. So far I’ve looked at Norfolk Howes baptisms from 1900 back to about 1875. There are only 5 or 6 baptism records out of nearly 350 that I’ve looked at so far that I cannot identify and place into family groups and most of those are illegitimate where there is naturally less information to go on.

- I’ve added another 30 certificates to the on-line media collection and fixed those of the previous ones that weren’t working properly.

- Working with new site member, Pam, I spent the good part of a weekend trying to figure out her family from Catfield. The only way I was able to do it was that she had shared about 15 birth, marriage and death certificates with me. It turns out we had made a major blunder in assuming that a male called Howes was the son of two older Howes on the same census page, with whom was living a grandchild, son of the father. In fact, the father was not the son but the son-in-law! Key to finding this out was a marriage certificate for the father when he married again some twenty-five years later! The marriage certificate showed that things were even more inertwined: the father’s sister became the second wife of the grandfather, who emigrated to Utah with her! The news came as a pleasant shock to other site members Elaine and Cheryl for whom the task of having to change their trees was tempered by the knowledge that they now have two Howes family lines to research!

- Site member Robin has sent in some very interesting material and when I find the time I will turn some of it into a web page. Robin’s grandfather was a General in the British Army who fought in India. The material sheds some interesting light on a notable member of our clan from a different era.

DNA study
Please do give the DNA study some thought. The Howes clans go way back in history before written records. DNA is the only way to link up groups of family members from before written registers. Please do take advantage of Ancestry’s discount offer while we can.
I don’t suppose anyone knows of any way we might further defray the cost? Other one-name studies have been going for quite a while and have received legacies from departed members which they are using. Clearly we have nothing like that.

A note to our Southern Hemisphere readers
Nights are drawing in, folks. In the Northern hemsiphere, traditionally there’s more family history action during the winter months. Is there anyone who can help pick up the slack as the Northerners get in their rounds of golf, rose pruning, sailing and so on?

Stats
As of tonight New Jersey time we now have 98 registered users and over 14,300 separate individuals named on the site.

Thank you again for your interest.
Paul