Tag: Howery

Lawrence Howery

Lawrence Howery

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I thought today I might take a few minutes to write about the life of Lawrence (Alloway) Howery. I often get messages from other genealogists who are confused by him and his story. With some luck, I’ll be able to say enough about him I can send this link to people who ask, and not have to type it all out again and again.

Lawrence Oscar Alloway was born January 8, 1921 in Madison, Nebraska. He was son of Ira Milton Alloway and Charlotte (Preuss) Alloway. He had four older siblings: Ralph (1913), Blanche (1914), Elisie (1915), and Harry (1916).

His mother, Charlotte, died a few months later, on April 13, 1921, of complications from childbirth. Lawrence and his siblings were sent to live with other local families. I haven’t been able to trace them all. I’ve found Ralph was raised by his father’s brother Ernest Alloway. Blanche and Harry were adopted by “a family in Humphrey, Nebraska.” I don’t have any information about Elsie.

Lawrence was adopted by his father’s sister, Bertha (Alloway) Howery and her husband Rev. Elmer Philip Howery. And that begins the subsequent confusion about Lawrence’s identity. It’s the reason the baby Lawrence Alloway eventually became Lawrence Howery.

Bertha and her husband had other children, who became Lawrence’s siblings: Margaret (1906), Dudley (1910), Kenneth (1916), Wilma (1918), and later Warren (1923). There had also been a baby Mary, born in 1912 and died in 1914. But I think it was really the death of their baby Charlotte that led to them adopting Lawrence. Charlotte was born April 17, 1921, just a few days after Lawrence’s mother died, and Charlotte herself only lived a short time. She died July 12, 1921.

There might have been less confusion, but Bertha’s husband Elmer died a year later, on November 22, 1922 in Fremont, Nebraska. Coupled with the birth of baby Warren the following January, Bertha must have had a difficult time. She married Evi Long in March 1924, and had another baby Carrol in December.

We don’t know when Bertha gave up Lawrence, but by 1930 he was living with Bertha’s sister-in-law, Eldora (Howery) Wright and her husband Sam Wright in Chico, California. Lawrence Wright appears on the 1930 census there, with no indication he was not their natural son (and no indication he had been Lawrence Howery before that). We know from family tradition Eldora and Sam Wright moved from Nebraska to Chico in the 1920s. My guess is baby Lawrence was already in their household and moved with them.

From there, Lawrence history is easy to trace if you know his different names. Growing up in California, Lawrence used the surname Wright, as we might expect from that time and place. According to articles in the local paper, he graduated from Central Grammar School June 1, 1935 under the name Lawrence Alloway Wright. He graduated from Chico High School in May 1939 using the same name.

However, he seems to have settled on the name Lawrence Howery when he enlisted in the army in 1939. Probably that was the name he could best support using legal records available to him. under the name Lawrence Howery. His enlistment papers say he was a resident of Butte County (that is, probably Chico) and (supposedly) had a year of college. He appears on the 1940 census at Honolulu, Hawaii also as Lawrence Howery, Private 1st Class. (He was still there in 1941, when he survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.) An article about him appeared in the local newspaper, Chico Record, published in 1943 calls him Lawrence Wright Howery, however on his wedding announcement in the same newspaper, he was listed as Lawrence (Howery) Wright. He was discharged in 1945, at the end of the war. Just before his discharge, he registered for the draft, also giving his name as Lawrence Howery.

I found some articles in the Chico newspaper. Lawrence Alloway Wright graduated from (Grammar school) Central, Jun 1, 1935. He went to school with my aunt, Lida Geraldine Wright. He graduated from Chico High School May, 1939 using the name Lawrence Alloway Wright. In 1943 on the marriage announcement, he used Lawrence (Howery) Wright. In 1946 article, about his schooling to become an Airline mech, for Western Airlines, I think he used Lawrence Howery. 

At some point, probably in conjunction with applying for Social Security, he got a delayed birth certificate, with his name as Lawrence Oscar Howery, son of Elmer Howery.

Almost Métis

Almost Métis

by Justin Durand

I used to think my dad’s ancestors were Métis. They’re not, but I ended up with a seemingly permanent interest.

The Métis are a Canadian group, a mixture of Anglos and Indians from the area between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains. Not all mixed-race people in Canada are Métis, just the ones where the men in the founding group were employees of the Hudson Bay Company.

One of those men was John Hourie (1779-1857). He came to Hudson’s Bay in 1800 from South Ronaldsay, one of the Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. About 1809 he married Margaret Bird, a Shoshone (“Snake”) woman. She was adopted daughter of James Curtis Bird.

Howery is not a very common surname. When I was maybe 13 or so and just getting started with genealogy, I knew almost nothing about my father or his family. I eventually eked out the information that his grandfather was Elmer Phillip Howery, who everyone agreed was born in England. (Recently it’s occurred to me that probably I was not hearing the difference between English and Anglo that would have been significant for my mother and some of the others I was talking to.)

I wrote confidently to Somerset House, the English vital records place. Nothing. No record, they said. In fact they had no records of any Howerys. That’s just England, though. Since it was obvious Howery is a British name (so naive back then!), I started thinking Howery is probably a Scottish name. Maybe Irish.

In those pre-Internet days each little nugget of information was a treasure. My access to information was essentially just the local library and quarterly issues of The Genealogical Helper.

I could also order Family Group Sheets from the LDS Genealogical Library in Salt Lake, but I had to be pretty focused. I needed to have name, date, and place. It’s hard to finesse a form when you don’t have much real information. There was no Family Group Sheet for Elmer Phillip Howery, so I was out of luck.

Lucky me. I found Black’s Surnames of Scotland (1946). Yep, there’s an entry for Hourie. I wasn’t finding anything remotely similar anywhere else in Europe, so I was sure this was going to be my family.

One of my strategies back then was to use phone books to find addresses of people who had the surnames I was looking for. The Grand Junction Public Library didn’t have a large collection but they did have some. I would also call directory assistance and do a little fishing for names and addresses. My allowance at that age wasn’t so high I could afford a lot of stamps, so I had to be cagey, looking for the best opportunities. Then too, most people never wrote back, even though I learned to type on my mother’s fancy Olivetti, she taught me to use business format, and I enclosed stamped return envelopes.

With my Howery search I eventually connected with Ian Howrie in Dallas, Texas. He told me, in one paragraph, the story of his ancestors John Hourie and Margaret Bird from Red River, Canada. I was sure that was my connection. The other people I talked to mostly agreed.

I think it was probably several years before I made contact with Pat Sorenson in Yuba City, California. That was through one of her ads in The Genealogical Helper. She couldn’t help with my line, not directly, but she offered the very firm advice that my line probably belonged to the large clan of Midwest Howerys and Howreys descended from Jacob Howry of Howrytown, Virginia, and he in turn from (she thought) the Mennonite Hauris and Howrys from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Pat turned out to be right. I gave up my Métis ancestry, almost without noticing. Too bad. I think my dad would have liked that line to pan out. Many years later when I wanted Ian Howrie to do a DNA test for the Hauri DNA Project, I couldn’t find him again. The whole Métis piece just receded into the distance, although I think there might be distant cousins here and there who still think we’re descended from John Hourie and Margaret, his Shoshone wife.

More Information

  • “John Hourie“, Red River Ancestry <www.redriverancestry.ca>, Dec. 5, 2016, retrieved Aug. 23, 2020.
Jacob Howry

Jacob Howry

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’m a member of Sons of the American Revolution through my ancestor Capt. Andrew Grant. I’ve been thinking lately I might want to do supplemental applications for other qualifying ancestors. There are a lot of them. My first thought was to do a supplemental application for James Kenney, because my mother and sister belong to DAR through him. Also because I’ve been thinking I might use that line to join Boonesborough Descendants. But sister Laura suggested there might be a better use of my time and resources.

Instead of doing ancestors who are already done, Laura suggested I could focus on ancestors who’ve never been used to join SAR or DAR. Maybe even focus at first on my dad’s side, where—frankly—it’s not very likely anyone else would be interested.

That’s when I had the idea of doing a memorial application for my step/adopted father Carroll Place. His ancestor Thomas Place served in the Vermont Militia. I wrote about that last week.

It took a bit longer for me to think of the obvious. Why not a supplemental application for my paternal ancestor, Jacob Howry, of Howrytown? He served in Capt. Andrew Pawley’s Company, 5th Battalion, York County Militia (Pennsylvania).

So now I have another project.

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Some Anniversaries

Some Anniversaries

by Justin Durand

February 8th is one of those days that stands out in the calendar of my family history. For me it has become Genealogy Day, a day to do something special about my interest in family history. Like Christmas but for me not Baby Jesus. And it helps a bit that Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is right around this time of year.

It’s the anniversary of my grandfather’s death. Harry William Swanstrom (1903-1957). By coincidence it’s also the anniversary of his sister’s death. Ellen Sophie (Swanstrom) Hinkle (1895-1949). She was the first of the kids to pass away.

That’s on the Swanstrom side. Then on the Howery side, today is the anniversary of the earliest surviving mention of the surname Hauri in history. A Conrad Hauri (Chuondradus dictus Hovri) was mentioned on 8 February 1282 as owing 9 shillings annually for his land at Steffisburg (Bern, No. 334), when Werner von Steffisburg leased certain lands to Kloster Interlaken. The taxes Conrad owed for his lands were in line with amounts throughout the region for larger peasant holdings. He was probably our ancestor but there’s no way to prove it.

For my Genealogy Day last year I started the process for getting a grave marker for my grandmother’s two babies that died at birth. Charles Edward Swanstrom (1932) and Harvey William Swanstrom (1934). It took nearly a year start to finish, which is part of the reason I’m just writing about it now.

My grandmother always intended to have a marker made for them and place it in Eden Valley Cemetery. It was one of the last things she mentioned to me just before she died. Actually, the babies are buried in Rock Springs but the funeral home has said there would not be enough left of their bodies to move them to Eden. And, we could mark the graves where they’re buried but then they would end up being disconnected from the family story.

So. We got the gravestone, and we had it placed between my grandparents’ graves. Also this year we did a memorial brick for my grandparents and another for my sister Evonne in the Peace Walk at the Amitabha Stupa in Sedona. But that’s a story for another time.