January 2010

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

January 2010

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone and welcome to a new decade with new challenges and new opportunities.

Milestone passed
Just yesterday, the number of people listed in our database crept over 20,000. To give you some idea of the total volume of data, the GED file containing all of our data that I use to update the online file has 450,000 lines in it!!

At a rough guess, about a third of the total number of people has come from people like you who have shared their family history with us for the benefit of the community. Thank you, everyone. The rest has mostly been down to quite a few hours of toil at the coalface, transcribing mostly from census and parish register records. In that regard, I'd like to pay tribute again to the dedication of my cousin, Ian, who has been a huge help.

We've had a pretty massive effort over past month, with my being able to work quite a bit thanks to some days off over the holidays. We've added close to 80 certificates online since my last lettter and have signed up another 16 members. We are currently adding about 2 members a week, or 100 per year. It's really gratifying to get this level of interest.

Several members have been able to share trees with us and/or provide update records already on the site. If you haven't been back to check details on your family recently, do take a look again. You never know.

We've had a bit of publicity too, with more to come, because I wrote an article for the Norfolk Family History Society and have been in touch with some British family history magazines about passing the milestone.

The personal touch
Here are three stories to illustrate just how personal family history can be:
1 - I had an email recently from a Lewis Howes, who had discovered the site on the internet on recommendation from Al Howes in Massachusetts (that's CuzAl). Lewis was visiting London while researching a new book and wanted to meet and learn more about the Howes clans. Even while we were in the restaurant, I was able to point him toward being a descendent of Thomas and Mary Howes who sailed to the US in 1637. I was subsequently able to confirm that, and find a listing for Lewis himself in the Howes Genealogy volume! Lewis is a very personable young man, an ex-professional American Football player. If you have ever come across the LinkedIn site on the web and wondered how it all works, you might like to know that Lewis wrote the book on it. Lewis's author page on Amazon is here: http://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Howes/e/B00 ... r_dp_pel_2
Check out his website too: http://www.lewishowes.com
2 - Bob in Mattishall, Norfolk wrote to say, "Until I read your article in the Norfolk FHS magazine I had no knowledge of the Howes family beyond my great grand mother. By way of the website I have now tracked back to my 7 x great grandparents and, by coincidence?, I now live in the same village as my 6 x great grandparents - Mattishall." As we say in Norfolk, the acorn doon't fall faar from the tree!
3 - One of the reasons I started this site was personal: I am stuck on my father's ancestry (which is how I met Ian). It now appears that we have gone back a farther generation in Norwich and tracked down some distant relations in Australia who had no idea whether they still had family in the old country! Greetings cousin Helen!

Next month or two
You may have noticed the site has a slightly different look, including colour. This is the early part of redesign. In the next few weeks, we'll start changing the look of the front page and putting up some pages dedicated to notable people called Howes. One of the first will be Corporal Augustus Howes, who died in WW1 and his brother Robert. I purchased the brothers' medals last weekend together with some family papers. It's quite a poignant story.

All the best
Paul

PS Ian and I have now counted 61 different ways to mistranscribe the name Howes! Take a look at the surname page on the site. If you are stuck finding your Howes, try a few of these and see what happens.
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