October 2013 - House it going?

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

October 2013 - House it going?

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. Happy new month.
We finish the month just 6 people short of 79,000 people in our database, having added over 700 people. If you were one of the many people who provided us with more information, we thank you. As someone once said to me, "This is a marathon, Paul, not a sprint. Don't fret so much over the number of people added every month." I stopped fretting but it is helpful to have a count nonetheless, to measure progress.

Talking about marathons . . . .
How would you like to run one? Could you do it? How about doing 300 of them? Could your spouse do it too? I didn't think it possible either, until I came across this article earlier the month about a Howes couple from the Lichfield area of England.
http://www.lichfieldmercury.co.uk/300-m ... story.html
Does anyone know this couple? We can see who they and their children are from the national birth and marriage index records, but we cannot trace Bill's parents. In significant part it's because his name is William, the most popular given name in our database.

We gained our second member from Argentina
Benvenido, Agustín Howes! Agustín tells me that we have yet another derivation for our surname: his family added an "s" to the end of their Howe surname at some point in the past (I can only recall only one other Howe family doing that). I'm looking forward to learning more about how that happened, and having my Spanish improve in the process!

Here are a few interesting databases which I don't think I mentioned before
- Door County, Wisconsin, Newspapers: http://www.doorcountynewspapers.org/

- Welsh Newspapers Online: http://papuraunewyddcymru.llgc.org.uk/en/home?
Apart from being free and fully searchable, the great thing about both of these sites is that although the newspapers themselves are local, the news they printed was often national.

- Ancestry.com - Birmingham, England parish registers are now online, similarly to their London and Surrey collections. And during the month I found a marvellous but very short set of records of Americans who died overseas. This last is fascinating. The first I looked at was for a George Howes who was born in Norfolk, England, lived in California and who popped his clogs while visiting his brother in Essex. The file contained addresses for three relatives and the date and place of his naturalization as a US citizen and the place of his burial in England. Worth a look if you have a US relative whose death you cannot find - go to their Card Catalog and search for "Abroad".

Research tip
Just this afternoon, my cousin sent me the addition of a death record for a a man named Howse. I'm not sure but I think it was me who did the research for this man's family. Normally, I'd check for a death record and if I didn't find one, I'd look at Howes, House and Hows too, just in case. Well I fell down on the job, clearly! The death record was in the name of House!
So the tip is to remember that the farther you go back in time, the fewer people were able to spell and even if they could, the less they cared about exact spelling. So if you're looking for a person in an index, do check other spellings.

And, talking about other spellings . . . .
My attention was drawn by another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies to the fact that one of the Commandants at West Point military academy in the early twentieth century was named Howze. He was Major General Robert Lee Howze, son of a rebel Captain Howze in the US civil war. As I looked at him a little farther, I found his wikipedia page and then that of his son, also a Major General, a military thinker who came up with the first strategic concepts for airborne troops in warfare.

Honestly, I'm not yet sure whether to add Howze to our list of surnames. Certainly it sounds like the other names, but outside of 16th/17th century English parish registers it appears to be a rarity and I'm not sure at this point whether it has a similar origin. Of course, 17th century England may be exactly the origin! Does anyone have any ideas on the topic?

And just as a side note, I note that the number of Generals on both sides of the Atlantic with names that sounds like ours continues to rise!

Happy hunting, folks
Paul
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