Hows it going? - April 2014

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

Hows it going? - April 2014

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. Well, we've left a few more milestones behind us as we continued on our journey this month: we added nearly 1,200 people to zip past 85,000 lives in total. We also now know the date and location for over 5,000 marriages in England and Wales between 1837 and 1950 – that's well over 20% of the total.

Our oldest tree
I was fortunate to be in Norfolk last month and thus able to follow up on a lead from correspondent Charles Ford in Canada, who had pointed me to the existence of an extensive tree for the Howes family of Morningthorpe Manor. The tree was the fruit of extensive research by Rev Charles Howes who died in 1880. His research passed to his great nephew, a Mr Basil Edward Howes born in 1894, who appears to have been the last male in his line. We have yet to find Basil's death record but believe it must have been in the 1960s, for that was when the research was acquired by the Norfolk Record Office.

Thoroughly researched, the tree takes that particular Howes clan back 14 generations to Richard Howys, a resident of the village of Besthorpe who died in 1457. The last 4 generations were able to be documented through probated wills before vital records started to appear in parish registers. We have yet to check the work other than what we already knew from other sources. A key learning at this point is that the family was wealthy enough to have left substantial property at a point when very few people did.

Another point is that I counted four or five instances of first cousins marrying and it occurs to me that this may have "weakened the gene pool". In the 19th century, many males in this family died young and/or never married and/or failed to procreate. It's both amazing that no males continued the line given that at least 3 families had ten or more children. It's also disappointing, because I'd wanted to find a male descendant to try to obtain a DNA sample!

Puzzle Corner
I know some readers like puzzles! Here's a good'un. If you follow this link:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/T ... 2,31621801
you'll see the St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth baptism register entry of Henry Charles Howes, born to Henry Thomas Howes, a sailor, and his wife Mary Ann. Question: can you find any reference to any of these folks in ANY other records before or after? You might think that because another Howes was baptized immediately before and their fathers were both sailors, the children were cousins. Possible, but we haven't found a single reference to HC or HT or a marriage to Mary Ann!

The Eagle has Landed - a free resource
No, it's not another Norfolk reference, although parts of the film were shot there. It's the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper, published daily from 1841 to 1955. It's just gone online, completely free to use. Every single issue is completely text searchable. Perhaps surprisingly, it contains a lot of foreign news. So it might be worth searching for articles even if your folks never went to Brooklyn. Go to: http://newsstand.bklynpubliclibrary.org

Now get out of that
Totally by chance, we stumbled across a reference to Harry Howes, b1873, whose day job was a gas fitter and washboard minder in the Bradford (Yorkshire) wool mills but who moonlighted as an escapologist by the name of Carleete. We have determined that Harry's full name was William Henry B Howes. Turns out that another Harry, by the name of Houdini, became interested in a barrel made by our Harry and bought it off him, later denying it and claiming to have invented it himself. To read more about this man, go to http://carleete.blogspot.com.

Other Howes/Howse/House people in the news
- England soccer team now has a Howes goalie
See: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/sport/ ... land_call/
OK, it's only a youth team, but we can hope . . .!

- Howes man builds replica German warplane
See: http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/1 ... ect/?ref=n

- Howes man gets replacement guitar
See: http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/nor ... _1_3571016

As always, if you can tell us more about any of the people in this note, we'd love to hear from you.

And finally, from Australia via Paypal we have received our second donation, which we will put toward the purchase of more certificates. Thank you. You know who you are. If anyone else would like to contribute, we'd be very grateful; we buy those certificates to help us solve problems in family reconstruction.
veridien
Posts: 2
Joined: December 2nd, 2009, 11:17 am

Re: Hows it going? - April 2014

Post by veridien »

Hi Paul

Hopefully the Morningthorpe document will be available as a scan some time soon (or a transcript). My earliest Howes lived in Attleborough through the 16-18th centuries, however I've never been able to make the connection with the Morningthorpe/Besthorpe family.
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Hows it going? - April 2014

Post by mardler »

Hi there, veridien.
The original document runs to over 100 pages (includes some distant non-Howes cousins) and I have no plans to put it online. What I have done, though, is transcribe all the relevant Howys/Howse/Howes details for the website and put them into the same tree format as with the rest of our information.

Here's a link where you can see the first five generations of this tree.
http://howesfamilies.com/descend.php?pe ... ee=Onename

You can see that there is still plenty of scope for as yet untraced Howes (or Howse!) descendants!
Regards
Paul
BPP
Posts: 2
Joined: May 4th, 2014, 6:01 am

Puzzle - Henry Charles HOWES 1880

Post by BPP »

I'd be pleased to hear if anyone can agree with my findings.
Marriages Mar 1874
Bowes Mary Ann Mutford 4a 987
Howes Henry Mutford 4a 987

The 1881 census has them with 2 children, Albert Arthur age 3 and Herbert age 1 month.

Births Mar 1878
HOWES Albert Arthur Norwich 4b 171
Births Jun 1881
HOWES Herbert Norwich 4b 152

Henry Charles (or Charles Henry as he was registered) was born 7 April 1879 but not registered until 23 Jan 1880 and this appears to have been spelled incorrectly as HAWES

Births Mar 1880
Hawes Charles Henry Norwich 4b 142

By 1901 they have another son, Sydney.

Births Sep 1885
Howes Sydney Charles Norwich 4b 160

Henry Thomas appears to have become a land-lubber after 1880 and in 1881 he is a general labourer, in 1891 a coal porter and in 1901 I can't work it out. If anyone can help with that, the reference is RG13/1842 page 14 living at 21 Heigham Street, Norwich.

I feel that it might be possible to find evidence of the death of Henry Charles shortly after his baptism but he isn't on FreeBMD. However, there is:
Sept.1880 HOWES Charles William 0 Mutford 4a 512
Just a vague possibility.

I have more information on Mary Ann BOWES if it is wanted I can post or send it.

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

Re: Hows it going? - April 2014

Post by mardler »

Hello Brian. Thank you SO much for taking a crack at the puzzle. Your thoughts were plausible except that:
- the child is not with that particular family in succeeding census records and no prior death can be found
- your theory assumed a late registration of birth - late registrations do occur but when it happens usually a the characters Qxx appear, where Q is the March, June, Sep or Dec quarter and xx means the year for which the correction is being made. I didn't see any such correction.

As it happens while I was pondering on your submission our correspondent Netta wrote in by email with what I think is the answer:
- name: Henry Charles Howe, not Howes
- born: Q2 1878 in Great Yarmouth RD, a year earlier than stated in the parish register
- Child Henry is with the family in 1891 at 67 Nelson Road in Great Yarmouth where his dad is named "Henry Thos." and is a Lamp Lighter with the Trinity Service. Father's name is spelled out in full in the 1901 census when he has been promoted to Master of the Nore Lightship in the Thames Estuary.
- I can see birth registrations for all children on the 1891 census
- I found baptisms for three of Henry's siblings, eg, Frederick Ernest and Florence Charlotte in St Nicholas, Yarmouth in May 1882 which also show the father's name as Henry Thomas Howe.
- young Henry is eluding me in the 1901 census but reappears in Essex in 1911 as a hairdresser with a family of his own.
So, it appears that the Howes entry in the 1880 was an aberration, perhaps caused by hurriedly copying out the original. The extensive registers show St Nicholas to have been a hectic parish!

All these HOWEs and HAWESes certainly add to the difficulty in resolving tricky cases!

I think what this exercise demonstrates is the difficulty in reconstructing families before census and civil registration records began. OK, most are relatively easy to figure out but if a mistake like this can occur toward the end of the 19th century, imagine the issues that can arise with more variable spellings earlier in time!

Thanks again for taking a crack at this. Hope you and Netta are up for another one soon
Paul
BPP
Posts: 2
Joined: May 4th, 2014, 6:01 am

Re: Hows it going? - April 2014

Post by BPP »

Well done, Netta. It sounds better than my findings. However, I'm up for another challenge any time.

Brian
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