Tell Us About Family Stories You've Debunked

Did you hear my "American heirs to Houghton castle fortune sought!" story?

My Oregon fruit farmers took up a collection to investigate the advertisement, because after all, Howton is just an "Americanized" spelling of the Houghton's of http://www.hoghtontower.co.uk/history.html - descendants of Lady Godiva & Harvey de Walter, perhaps most famous for King James l knighting his roast "Sir Loin". ....

OK, OK, so maybe it's a distaff line. Could be the Ralph Houghton who blew up the family castle in some revolutionary hijinks, hightailed it to America with his cousin John, swindled some Indians and founded Lancaster, Massachusetts ...

I proved, some years ago, it was Howton in England. Always was.

What a great topic, Ashley! You're always so good at coming up with topics. Thanks for this one.

I'm not sure which story to tell. I think I've done more de-bunking in my lifetime than finding new lines. Probably my favorite, though, is my first one.

I was a teenager, enthusiastically getting addicted to genealogy. I made contact with the "Old Guard" of Howery genealogists. They were doing research before I was even born, and they handed me all their information on a silver platter. Fantastic stuff.

They had the family back to Hans Hauri, the Woolweaver -- a Mennonite who left Switzerland in 1711 headed for Amsterdam. We don't know whether he got to Amsterdam, but two men, Hans and Ulrich Howry, were in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania by 1718. Presumably brothers, and presumably sons of the Woolweaver. Hans was the progenitor of a large family of Mennonite Howrys in Pennsylvania. His brother Ulrich died, leaving a widow, and apparently a son Jacob Howry, who later went south to Virginia and founded Howrytown in Botetourt County.

It was a nice story, but I saw a problem. The Jacob Howry who was supposedly Ulrich's son was a Lutheran, across the river in York County.

So, I argued with the Old Guard. I did not believe that a Mennonite family fled Switzerland in 1711 and by 1742 one of them had turned Lutheran. Think about social pressure. No way that would have happened. It goes against common sense.

The Old Guard was patronizing. I was just a "kid". Basically, they told me to sit down, shut up, and appreciate the fact that the experts had already figured it out.

I got a copy of Ulrich's will. It showed that he left his estate 1/3 to his widow and 2/3 to his brothers. In other words, the classic form for a man who had no children and was giving his wife her dower interest. Not good enough. They argued that "brothers" was being used in a religious sense. I argued back that no man of that time dying with a wife and infant son would have left 2/3 of his estate to his neighbors.

Back and forth. Each new piece of evidence I found supported my theory, and weakened theirs. An immigration record for Jacob in 1737. An estate settlement for Jacob in 1755. Etc.

It took 20 years, but eventually the Old Guard admitted that I'd proved them wrong. By then, of course, I was part of the Old Guard myself.

Still, it was another genealogist who finally found the final connection. Jacob Howry, founder of Howrytown, Virginia, was the son of the immigrant Jacob, not the immigrant himself. He was a distant cousin of the Mennonite family, and came to Pennsylvania 20 years after they did, via the Palatinate from a different village in Switzerland, just a few miles away from the Mennonite bunch.

I also have a couple other fun Howery stories. This one is about using DNA to prove a line.

I got a shaky start on the genealogy of my dad's Howery ancestors. First, my grandfather wasn't much interested in genealogy and didn't know a lot about his ancestors. He thought that his Grandpa Howery was born in Ireland, and he thought that there was something about Howery not really being our name. Grandpa's middle name was Hamilton, and he seemed to remember a story about a Hamilton ancestor who got the surname Howery from a step-father.

It was easy enough to zip through the records and find that the Howerys were from Switzerland, not Ireland, and that Grandpa's grandfather was born in Wisconsin, not Ireland. (Like Ashley, I still have relatives who refuse to believe this. They're convinced that I've gone off track somewhere.)

It was harder to figure out the possible Hamilton connection. My grandfather's grandfather was Charles Hamilton Howery, but I couldn't find anywhere along the line where there was evidence of, or even room for, a Hamilton step-father. It was making me nuts because I was sure I must be missing something.

Secondly, my dad himself wasn't sure about his Howery ancestry. He thought he might be really the son of a colorful Wyoming outlaw, Earl Durand. No one else thought so, not even his mother, but my dad was an artist and his PR people really liked that story. Dad changed his name to Durand, and wanted all the genealogy changed.

In 2000, genetic genealogy was in its infancy, but I could see the potential benefit for me. I would find a distant Haury cousin, we would both get DNA tests, and whether we matched or not, I would have a better direction. So, that's what I did.

Surprise (or maybe not), we matched. The paper trail shows that our common ancestor lived about 1500. Amazing. Our test got written up in the Wall Street Journal, and for years I got calls from reporters who wanted to do a genetic genealogy story. The best part for me, though, was that one simple test cut through all the speculation. No Hamiltons. No Durands. Just Howerys. It meant that I could stop looking for missing evidence and just focus on doing regular old paper genealogy.