I know many of the people who read these notes are not devotees of genealogy, like me. That's fine, of course. If you are "genealogy curious" and/or want to learn how to do better research you might want to read the first part of what follows. I think you will find it very helpful
RootsTech
In Salt Lake City I was attending RootsTech, of course. (I've told you many times!) It was the first time back there in three years and although it did snow a lot, I had a lot of fun. I caught up with many old friends and made a few new ones. As I have done in the past, I found a few people to interview, one of whom then turned around and interviewed me back! More on that in a moment.
First a word about some of the sessions, I attended. One of the very best was first up on the first day. Danielle Batson and Amber Larsen talked about the FamilySeach Wiki, which they manage. I thought I knew quite a bit, but I had been missing a lot. Check out this video of their talk.
https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/ ... earch-wiki and particularly the part toward the end where the wiki is now smart enough to help you with "Guided Research", a brilliant innovation, in my opinion.
Then I interviewed their boss! His name is Darris WIlliams. He's a specialist in Welsh genealogy, a fellow member of the Guild of One-Name Studies, a trustee of the Society of Genealogists in London and an all-round nice guy. You can see the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNzIRkTMgb4
One of the most innovative companies out there is MyHeritage, a plucky Israeli company competing with the larger data providers. They made several announcements of new products during the conference, most notably a date estimator for photographs using artificial intelligence and a new tool, yet to come, called Reimagine, allowing you to scan multiple photos at the same time and then operate on them with all of MyHertage's tools. Here's an interview with their chief genealogist, Daniel Horowitz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7JyJSnaHDY
Most notable, perhaps is the American broadcaster, Scott Fisher, who runs a weekly radio show and podcast called Extreme Genes, for over ten years now - available anywhere in the world via your favorite podcatcher. He has some fascinating stories to tell. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZbPnm_I31c. Scott's not the only one with interesting stories! We got talking after the formal interview and I talked about this study. He then asked me to record a few minutes' worth which you can listen to here: https://www.extremegenes.com/blog/episo ... l-and-more.
Not all the sessions were recorded, unfortunately. Two which I particularly enjoyed were by:
- Sunny Morton on using Modern newspapers. She pointed out the importance of knowing which of the providers has the best coverage in the area you are looking for
- Julie Merrill, who talked about finding Southern (US) Ancestors before the Civil War. This is a topic we will have to do more of as we exhaust modern records.
Finally, do not forget that there are now over 1,500 sessions from the last 4 years of shows available for instant watching at RootsTech.org. I can almost guarantee that you will find something interesting there!
Salt Lake City adventures
Outside of RootsTech, the main attraction is the main FamilySearch Library. It's always a challenge to figure out what you can best do in the library that you cannot also do from your armchair or at the local LDS church center. This year I scoured the book stacks looking for resources on our names. There were a few US county histories that I was able to plunder, but I figured that I should also look at national and statewide Who's Who listings Each one might only provide details on a person, and perhaps their parents and children as well as biographical details. I managed to get a lot of these. For each one, not wanting to waste library time, I noted the details direct into our master file and then found an online reference to them which should lead me to their wider family. I still have about 30 open tabs in my browser and I'll be working on each of these over the next few weeks.
While searching for such books I was pleasantly surprised to find a book called "American Women 1935-1940" written by Durward Howes! After a while at this one's eyes are trained to stop whenever the word House or Howes appears. Pleased to say that there were two women mentioned in it too: Jennie Josephine Howes, nee Wight, and Edith Elizabeth House.
I will merely add at this point that Salt Lake City, being surrounded by limestone mountains, is blessed with very hard water, which just happens to be great for brewing beer. Let's just say that it would have been rude not to have sampled several. . . .!
Our progress this month
I can't remember how I found him now, but while in Salt Lake City, I found that Leon Clyde Dwight is unique among all the men in our database: he is the only one we have found so far to have married a Howes woman and a House woman. Well done that man for bringing the two clans together!
During March, the UK National Archives issued an index of UK Prisoners of War, transcribed from index cards of prisoners in World War 2. There were 68 House, Howes, Howse and Hows records. Three of them may well still be alive. So their records are hidden from view. We were able to identify all the rest and add details to their lives which we didn't already have, Interestingly, one, a Rodney Wayne House, died in 1943, was very difficult to track down. Turns out that is because he was an American airman, somehow reported to British authorities, Once we figured out that nobody with that name appeared in any other British records, he was easy to find. He had been in the Army and then became a bomber pilot who was shot down in WW2 and indeed became a prisoner of war. Thing is, though, he didn't die until 2003! How the Germans managed to report his death to the British authorities will remain a mystery, at least until the individual files are opened.
Given all the above, you won't be surprised to learn that we added 1300+ people to our database this month, finishing at 204,977 people in the file. Notably, we now have more than 8,000 people named HOWSE in our database to add to the 44,000 HOWESes and 31,000 HOUSEs.
Howes in the News
There really was only one story worth featuring this month. HE DID IT! Simon Howes completed his single handed row across the Atlantic covering 3,000 miles in 72 days. I love the water, but I couldn't do that! Chapeau to you, sir.
Read all about his trip here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-ham ... 139256.amp
And here's that picture of the man in his boat in East Cowes Harbour. Not very big, is it?!
- SimonHowes.jpg (106.23 KiB) Viewed 731 times
Paul