Going round the HOWSes - October 2017

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

Going round the HOWSes - October 2017

Post by mardler »

Hello everyone. This month we added over 850 people to our database, finishing at just over 126,000 people. We also passed a few other milestones this month:
- of the 23,900 marriages in England and Wales between 1837 and 1950 (our basic checklist for our progress) we now know the identity of both partners for over 17,500 and the actual location for over 7,000
- the name HOWZE has passed SMITH to become the 4th most frequent name in our database. Click on Surnames in the left hand column to see detail. HOWES is #1, HOUSE is #2, HOWSE is #3 and HOWS #6
- we now have over 10,000 different place name references just in London alone! The next biggest locations are the USA and Norfolk. See the PLACES menu in the left-hand column.

Howes in the News
One item we spotted this month was about a wildlife and landscape photographer Wayne Howes from North East Kent in England. Check him out at http://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/n ... os-121244/. I love the pictures of the Barn Owl and the Kingfisher, used in our covering email. If you are from the area and visit the exhibition referred to, do see if you can get more pictures and/or a contact with Wayne.

Spelling
On this website, we try to record every fact and that includes every different name used by or to describe every person. Some would see it as detail-orientation! However, doing that can reveal some interesting facts. Some years ago, we demonstrated that about 30% of all Howes men born before 1900 had had more than one surname during their lives. Some people in our database have five different surnames!
I thought this marriage register entry from 1818 which we found during the month to be quite interesting.
http://howesfamilies.com/showmedia.php? ... nkID=10051
The clergyman wrote the bride's name as Howse, the most frequent spelling variant for our name in that part of Gloucestershire. However, she and her three relatives who witnessed the marriage all signed their names as Howes!
What do we take from all of this? Until recently, it really didn't matter how you (or anyone else) spelled your name. It was the sound that mattered.

New version of Family Historian
During the month, I upgraded my version of Family Historian (FH), our master database software. I'd bought the upgrade to it over two years ago but had not used it because I was just too busy as chairman of the Guild of One-Name Studies. However, my cousin Ian decided to give FH a try and I found that I had to upgrade to be able to help him with some questions. Only problem was that in the interim I had upgraded to Windows 10 and the upgrade didn't take properly. I went through two days of withdrawal symptoms before I could get things fixed, with the help of FH support staff. Learn from me, folks. Don't wait to upgrade. Do it now! It's simpler.

One of the benefits of upgrading is that there is a mapping facility within FH and we have begun to use it. We hope to transfer the locations found over to our online program. That isn't working so far!

The return of Uncertificates!
If you are interested in British genealogy and haven't yet seen our page about the new uncertified copies of birth and death records available from the General Record Office for England and Wales, do go and take a look at http://howesfamilies.com/histories/feature10.php. For the last couple of weeks the service has been available again, as a further trial. The cost of each un-certificate is only £6. Buy with both hands!

A new volunteer
Correspondent Sue has offered to transcribe a few wills after I mentioned it in last month's note. Thank you, Sue. If anyone else would like to try a few, do let me know.

All the best
Paul
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