Keeping Howse - June 2024

[mardler]

Hello everyone. Happy new month. We’ve had quite a few of our folks in the news this month. So I will talk a lot about that below, but first some words on our research.
At the end of the note is a bonus for the genealogists among us: a description of how I used a new tool from the folks at FamilySearch. Let me know how you get on if you try it.

Our research this month
I’ve been out yachting every weekend – more about that below. So not as much work was done as in most months. I’ve just finished 1930 in my marriage project. It’s taken 14 months to get this far from 1837, but I expect the last 50 years of the project to go more quickly. We added just 360 people to finish the month on 213,633 people in our master file.

Howes in the news
 Katey Howes, RIP
Reading obituaries is a sad part of genealogy, even sadder when the person who passed was way too young. Such was the case for Katey Howes who was a children’s book author and very talented at it, too. The obit linked below has a link to her website where you can still see her work.
One of my daughters-in-law has a post-graduate degree in education and teaches grade 5. I asked her for comments on Katey’s work. To summarize, she said it was simply excellent.
Do read Katey’s story here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by- ... howes.html

 Your humble scribe
I mentioned last month that I might be on TV in the UK. Well, it happened. I was a participant in the Three Rivers (sailing) Race around the Norfolk Broads, and was interviewed by BBC Countryfile before the start of the race, which was exceptionally windy this year. They filmed our start, and us going under one of the bridges on the course. My crew also was given a BBC go-pro camera with which we shot some footage which was also used in the programme. If you are in the UK, you can see it on iPlayer for the next 29 days at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... ivers-race
If you aren’t in the UK, you may be able to get through using some internet trickery, though it’s only intended for UK viewers, I’m afraid. That said, a friend of mine in Fiji has seen it!

 Grant Howes of Ontario
Following news about “Cider King” Jeffrey House and his book last month another article about Howes and cider crossed my desk in June. Richard Grant Howes from County Cider Company in Ontario was inducted into the Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame, seven years after his death. Grant was described as a “cider-making legend”. Are there any Canadians reading this who have tried his product? Read more here: https://www.countylive.ca/grant-howes-i ... l-of-fame/

 Bill Howes of Moose Jaw wins meat
Apparently a company in Moose Jaw has a monthly gift of meat for the most eligible local father. Bill Howes has just retired as a firefighter and was nominated for the prize by his daughter. See: https://discovermoosejaw.com/articles/m ... 1th-winner
I just love oddities like this1 Bill’s not in our database that I can see, anyone know him?

 Howes Diamond Jewelers celebrates 60 years of business
Started by Bill howes in 1964 and now run by his son, Dan, Howes Diamond Jewelers has two locations in La Crosse, Wisconsin and Red Wing, Minnesota. Our congratulations to them. Read more at: https://archive.ph/ggJfl
Note; the original article is not available to European viewers because of over-zealous blocking by some news sites arising from European data protection regulations. So I archived it.

 Yasmin Howes goes sailing
Being a sailor myself this article caught my attention. Yesmin is a young cancer survivor and was invited to go sailing by a charity formed by Ellen McArthur, a famous British yachtswoman. What a fabulous idea. The article is really worth reading and you may consider supporting the charity.
https://www.heraldseries.co.uk/news/243 ... d-sailing/


FamilySearch’s Artificial Intelligence tool – try it!
Here's some background first. Back at RootsTech in February, the good folks at FamilySearch demonstrated a new tool, which is still under development, but usable. They've used artificial intelligence to transcribe old handwritten documents and make them fully text searchable, thus largely eliminating the need for painstaking indexing the names contained in those documents. You can see a description of the tool here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text.

Do watch the video and scroll down to see a list of the digitized data sets. Items 1 and 3 should provide material of interest to American readers, and items 4 and 5 for Australian and New Zealand readers.

Here's what I was able to do
I took over a week during the month to work on a Howes family from the Annapolis area in Maryland. It all started with an obituary in the local newspaper. I traced the family back to a man named McCeney Howes born around 1827 in Anne Arundel County in Maryland. Looking at other records I already had in my database for Howes families in the same area it looked like his parents might be John Howes and Sarah Perry, but I could not find a link between them. There is a lot of information on vital events in Maryland recently placed online at archive.org but they aren't indexed. You have to know a lot about the event in advance of searching there.

So, I searched for McCeney Howes using the FamilySearch’s AI tool. Without even narrowing the search down using the buttons at the top of the results page, I found a property transaction in 1876 and two later items from a probate court when McCeney was the guardian for some children. Good, but not what I wanted.

Then I thought, well, maybe when John Howes had died (before the 1850 census) he had left a will and named his children in it. So I started searching for a John Howes in Anne Arundel county. I immediately found a November 1840 probate court record for guardianship of the children of a John Hows. The two older children (Robert and Elizabeth) became wards of their uncle and three younger ones: Zachariah, Thomas and John were assigned to another. The uncle was named as "administrator" of the deceased, meaning no will. Again, close but no cigar!

NOW, one of the key things to notice, is that when you open a dataset (in this case: Anne Arundel Probate Records 1838-1842) every instance of the search terms (John and Hows) is highlighted in yellow. So, from the initial record I clicked on the subsequent page and immediately found the formal appointment of guardians, they having posted bond in the interim. Then I tabbed back only looking for the name following "John" to find other steps in the court's process and eventually the first entry, where in May 1839 John's widow renounced her right to administer John's estate and asked the court to appoint her brother. Still no closer to McCeney.

Then I wondered whether one of Zachariah, Thomas or John had changed his name to McCeney. So I looked down the list of matches from my first search. Boy, did I get lucky?! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a later (1848) probate court record where the second guardian presented his accounts for the three children with a sign-off from McCeney Howes who had come of age. The guardian explained to the court that Zachariah and McCeney were the same person and he had used the wrong name in all prior court proceedings "by mistake". Bingo!

So, not only did I solve the problem but thanks to the AI tool's transcription I have been able to copy and paste the text of the court records into our database. Because the transcription isn't perfect, it takes a short while to correct it, but it's way quicker than typing from the original.

Give it a try! See what you can find.

Regards to all and thanks for your continued support