Going round the HOWZEs - December 2018

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

Going round the HOWZEs - December 2018

Post by mardler »

Sending the newsletter early to be sure it reaches our friends in New Zealand before the new year!

Certificate price increase
If you have ancestors from England and Wales, born, married or died since 1837 and you might want to order a certificate, listen up: do it now! On Feb 1, next year, the prices will go up by almost 20%. An electronic un-certificate (see: https://howesfamilies.com/histories/feature10.php) will now cost £7 and a regular certificate will be £11. So order before then.

Because we have our own certificate ordering program, we are anxious to use our limited funds as best we can. So we are working through our files to see how we can maximize the value of those funds and buy as many as we can with funds available before the increase. If you would like to support our efforts, please do drop me a line. In this regard, I want to say a big thanks to correspondent Jackie, who sent us £100 this month in return for our help in finding her father's birth record and tracking her Howes family. We haven't quite finished but the last certificate should be mailed tomorrow.

Help from Guild members
We are a proud member of the Guild of One-Name Studies. Although each of us plows our own furrow, studying our own different surname, we have much in common. Consequently, Guild members often collaborate closely with one another. 999 times out of 1,000 when a Howes marries it's to someone not called Howes. So, we have many other Guild surnames in our study and other Guild members have Howes or House in their study.

At Easter 2017 I realized that we had had input from 28 other Guild members and I decided to see whether I could increase the number of other One-Name Studies as sources for our study up to 200 by end-2018. Pleased to say that we now list 202 other studies as sources on this list: https://howesfamilies.com/browsesources ... arch=ne-na
If you have a relatively unusual name in your background, do check at http://www.one-name.org to see whether a Guild member is studying that name. Perhaps they can help you. Maybe you can help them.

Puzzle corner
We didn't get any answers to our puzzle from last month. To be honest, I don't worry too much about that. It means we haven't missed anything obvious . . . I hope!

OK. Here's this month's. Question: who was William David Howes? See his record here:
https://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php ... ee=Onename
William and his partner, Mabel, had three sons between 1927 and 1933. We bought a birth certificate for one of the sons from which information relative to the parents has been extracted. We cannot find either a birth or a marriage record for William snr, and can't find an obvious census or military record for him. Thus we cannot place him into a family. Can you?

Free Stuff
You know I like free stuff! Several things this month:
1 - US servicemens' burial records. We've been commemorating British servicemen who died for King/Queen & country for some years now and we may well start doing the same for US servicemen. This month saw the release by the US National Archives of Deceased Soldiers' Burial Cards. If you are interested, you can find the details by searching within this data set:
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6943087
Although much of the US government is currently closed, its websites are still running.

2 - video-recordings. MyHeritage recently ran a conference in Oslo, Norway and had a wide range of speakers from around the world. All the sessions were recorded and are available for online viewing. See the list here: https://blog.myheritage.com/2018/11/myh ... ow-online/

And for a bit of fun take a look at "Dr Phil" who reacted live on TV to being shown his DNA results given to him by MyHeritage. (They are good marketers!) See:
https://www.drphil.com/videos/dr-phils- ... itage-dna/

3 - in a similar vein, but thinking ahead, RootsTech has just published its live-streaming schedule of the conference in two months' time. So, even if you can't make it to Salt Lake City, you can sit at home and watch these presentations live online. Here is the streaming schedule: https://www.rootstech.org/salt-lake/liv ... m-schedule for all four days.
Sadly, I didn't make the cut! However, there's still time to book to come and see me live! Also, not quite free but if you happen to be in the area, note that I will be speaking at the North Florida Genealogy Conference in Jacksonville on March 9. See: https://nfgenealogyconference.org/

Year-end report
We fired on all cylinders this month, adding almost 2,000 people to whizz past 140,000 and finish the year on 141.270 people containing well over 720,000 facts. Our data file is MASSIVE: over 100MB, all text! We have over 1,400 correspondents, most of whom receive our covering email.
I'm pleased to see that 300-400 people click through to regularly read these postings. That's way more than most normal emails get. Knowing there are other people out there who also care makes it all worthwhile.

So that's it for 2018, folks. Thank you for your continued support and if you can help with our certificate buying program, please do let me know.

Finally, best wishes to everyone for the new year and special thanks to our volunteers, among whom: Ian, Mike, Mike, Chris, Judith, Sue and Brian. Couldn't have done it without you, folks.
Paul

PS ahhh, nearly forgot. Is there anyone out there with experience of phpBB, the software that this board uses. We need to upgrade to a more modern version and my software skills are so rusty that I would really appreciate some younger support. I will even pay a reasonable fee to anyone who can help.
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Going round the HOWZEs - December 2018

Post by mardler »

Well done to correspondent Celia Stanley who figured out that William David Howes 1881 was in fact . . . . .drum roll . . . . born David William Howse in 1884, and was already in our records!

Almost nothing ties up in the several records that David appears in, except that he didn't go far from his original home. And that's the point.

"Takes a genius to spot the obvious," Celia! Thank you.
Paul

PS just for the benefit of anyone coming across this after we merge the records on Jan 6 or so, the combined record will be here:
https://howesfamilies.com/getperson.php ... ee=Onename

PPS can anyone now spot a marriage for David and Mabel?
mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

Re: Going round the HOWZEs - December 2018

Post by mardler »

Do not bother with a marriage for this couple. There wasn't one!
Mabel died under her maiden name of Woolford in 1938. Thanks again to Celia.
Paul
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