Finding William Small Howe (part 4)

We last left Finding William Small Howe (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) with finding his death notice in the Boston Evening Transcript and the clue of "He was captain in the First Maine Cavalry." He would be the right age to serve in the American Civil War (AKA "War of the Rebellion" or "War for Southern Independence" depending on the side you were rooting for). So we might want to start there.

But first, since he died in Lewiston, Maine, are there any online archives of papers from that time and place? The Google News Archives is to the rescue once again. On page 4 of the 5 o'clock edition of the August 25, 1891 Lewiston Evening Journal there is a several column inch article for the "Death of Dr. Howe." There is plenty of great information in the article to confirm what I've already found through other records but still no mention of his parents. Sigh. Yet there is a lot of new information about his life in Maine. Some details gleaned from the article include:

• He died Midnight Monday, 24 Aug 1891
• He came to Lewiston with his wife and daughter in 1885 from Pittsfield, Maine
• He was a homeopathic physician
• He was born in St. John, New Brunswick on 9 Feb 1834
• He was educated in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Horton, Nova Scotia, and entered Acadia College in New Brunswick but did not graduate
• He was active in the Baptist ministry up to the outbreak of war
• He enlisted in the D.C. Cavalry and, after consolidation,was in the First Maine Cavalry
• He was a commissioned  office and Chaplain of Company D in the First Maine Cavalry
• He was taken prisoner at the famous cattle-raid and for nine months was a prisoner in Libby
• He was at the battle of Five Forks where he was shot though the body
• After the war, due to his poor health, he studied medicine and graduated from Bowdoin Medical School in 1869 and the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1870
• In 1883 he graduated from the Hahnemann School of Homeopathy in Philadelphia
• He was a member of the Blue Lodge and Chapter in Masonry
• He leaves a wife and a daughter upon his death and two children died previously, a son and a daughter

Wow!

A quick Google search on Maine Masonic Archives brought me to the Genealogy page of the Grand Lodge of Maine Library. I wasn't expecting to find too much information online there when I spotted, "The original files of the members of the Grand Lodge of Maine from 1820 to 1995 are digitized and online." Clicking in the provided link brought me to the "Genealogy & Family Information" page with a long list of PDF files and one of those files had William S. Howe's index card:

Could both of these cards be the same person? One is a Reverend and the other a Medical Doctor and William was both. Lodge 72 Pioneer is in Ashland and in the 1860 census that is where William S. Howe resided with Grace E. and Charles E. Lodge 125 Meridian is located in Pittsfield. Guess where the William S. Howe we've been following resided in the 1870 and 1880 census? Correct, Pittsfield. Finally, the obituary mentions that he will be buried under the direction of Rabboni Lodge of Lewiston. I would say that the two index cards refer to the same person but at different periods of his life.

We also have information that he enlisted in the District of Columbia Calvary and was later a commissioned officer in Company D of the First Maine Cavalry. A search of military records on Ancestry reveals several William S. Howe's resided in Maine with approximately the same birth year. So how do I figure out the right William S. Howe? Fortunately, on a pension index card I come across an image for William S. Howe with a widow Grace E. Howe listed as the dependent with services in "Corp. D. 1 Maine Cav." and "D, 1 D. C. Cav." I'd say this is the right person.

"U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934," database and images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 29 Dec 2016); card for William S Howe.

The index card includes several important details, those of the application numbers and certificate numbers for William's application as an invalid and Grace's application as a widow. As a to do item I've made a note to see about ordering document from National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). But that will be sometime in the future. Who knows what those documents will contain?

In the meanwhile, I also did a Google search for any books on the First Maine Cavalry. I came across the book "History of the First Maine Calvary, 1861-1865" by Edward P. Tobie that was published in 1887. This meant the book was out of copyright and might be available from the Internet Archive. A quick search there pulled up the exact book I was looking for. Hoping for an index at the back of the book I found something even better in the Index To Illustrations, a mention of "Howe, Capt. & Dr. Wm. S. Co. D" on page 273.

I still didn't have a document connecting William to his parents Charles and Hannah (Baxter) Howe. I had a lot of information on his life and his service though census records, letters in the First Maine Bugle publication, books, index cards, and newspaper articles but not what I was really looking for.

That is until I decided to do a little more complex Google Search with the key word:

william small howe maine -"sir william" -"sir howe" physician charles hannah

I needed to exclude Sir William Howe and that is why the minus signs in front of some of the key words. This is what appeared on my screen.

The first entry was the book "Obituary Record of the Graduates of Bowdoin Collect and the Medical School of Maine For The Year Ending 1 June 1892 [No. 3. Second Series]" and on page 106 is his obituary which starts with [emphasis is mine]:

"William Small Howe, son of Charles and Hannah (Baxter) Howe, was born 9 February, 1834, at St. John, N.B. ..."

and ends with:

"Dr. Howe married 10 December, 1857, Grace E., daughter of Charles and Margaret (Porter) Emery, who survives, with one daughter. Their eldest son, Charles Emery, died as he was about entering upon the practice of medicine, and an elder daughter, Annie P., died in childhood."

The date of the marriage is off by a few months but all the details appear to line up with what I have gathered over the years. I think I finally found the smoking gun. Without looking in many places and following the clues each document provided I would never have been able to confirm what I thought might be correct, that the William Small Howe, residing in Maine and married to Grace E. Emery, is the same William Small Howe, son of Charles and Hannah (Baxter).



Finally, may I introduce you to my third great-granduncle, Captain William Small Howe, M.D. of Company D of the First Maine Cavalry.

Edward P. Tobie, History of the First Maine Calvary, 1861-1865 (Boston, Massachusetts: Press of Emery & Hughes, 1887), 273.

Finding William Small Howe (part 3)

As we saw in Part 1 and Part 2 of Finding William Small Howe, after disappearing from the Colony of New Brunswick after the 1851 census William Small Howe was found in the State of Maine, USA. We still haven't found that smoking gun document that connects him with his parents after he moves to Maine but the evidence looks pretty good when it is presented as a bundle. So what else can we discover?

Since I have a paid subscription with Ancestry I will continue to search there...

The first hint that popped up is one from the U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current database. Since this is an index I want to check out the Find A Grave page to see if it is just a simple memorial page gleaned from other sources without a picture of the marker or, if we are very lucky, there will be a picture with other details provided.

And we are lucky!

The memorial has not just a picture of the marker but also a close up of the writing and calculated relationships.

Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 6 Jan 2017), memorial page for Dr. William S Howe (1835-1891), Find A Grave Memorial no. 15825309, citing Pittsfield Village Cemetery, Pittsfield, Somerset County, Maine, USA; photograph provided by Jennifer Kelley.

But is this the right William S. Howe? We need to check the rest of the names on the marker. We find:

Grace E. Howe1	C. Emery Howe2	Annie P. Howe3

All three of those people were found in the 1870 Federal Census of Somerset County, Maine, USA in the household of William S. Howe. This looks to be the right family. Of course, that is assuming the family in the 1870 census is the right family. Might was well continue going down this rabbit hole unless some fact or event proves otherwise.

Now that I have the probable death date for William S Howe, Ancestry provided another hint. This time it is from the Maine, Wills and Probate Records, 1584-1999 collection. This collection has digitized images of wills and probates. A wonderful find! It is presented as a virtual microfilm and it isn't just one image but the will and probate file for William S. Howe goes from image 383 to image 405. We even find the will itself:

"Maine, Wills and Probate Records, 1584-1999," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.ca: accessed 6 Jan 2017), William S Howe will dated 13 Jun 1891; citing Probate Court (Androscoggin County, Maine) 

William mentions his daughter Josie E. Howe and his wife Grace E. Howe. We saw them in the 1880 Federal Census, Somerset County, Maine, USA. So the will and probate appears to be for the same William S. Howe we have been following.

A hint from the U.S., Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704-1930 collection also appears. This is only an index and for the image of the index document it states, "Howe, Dr.,W.S., d. Aug,25,1891(T . Aug.26)". This is a pointer to the August 26, 1891 edition of the Boston Transcript. So, where do we find the Boston Transcript? The Vita Brevis blog of the New England Historical Genealogical Society posted on November 7, 2016 "Boston Transcript column now online" is a great write up on finding that newspaper so I will defer to them.

Unfortunately me for, the August 26, 1891 edition isn't in the Google News Archive. Murphy's Law strikes again...the August 25 edition has been digitized but not the 26th.

But wait a second

If I go to the August 25 edition and keep going through the pages I come to the August 26th edition. Interesting!

On page 8 of the Boston Evening Transcript under "Recent Deaths" I find this notice:

"Recent Deaths - Dr. W. S. Howe," Boston Evening Transcript, 26 Aug 1891, p. 8, col. 5; digital images, Google News Archives (http://news.google.com/newspapers : accessed 6 Jan 2017).

Captain in the First Maine Cavalry? I wonder where this will lead me?

To be continued...

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1. Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 6 Jan 2017), memorial page for Grace E Howe (1834-1907), Find A Grave Memorial no. 15825313, citing Pittsfield Village Cemetery, Pittsfield, Somerset County, Maine, USA; photograph provided by Jim.

2. Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 6 Jan 2017), memorial page for C Emery Howe (unknown-1882), Find A Grave Memorial no. 15825300, citing Pittsfield Village Cemetery, Pittsfield, Somerset County, Maine, USA; photograph provided by Jim.

3. Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 6 Jan 2017), memorial page for Annie P Howe (unknown-1876), Find A Grave Memorial no. 15825317, citing Pittsfield Village Cemetery, Pittsfield, Somerset County, Maine, USA; photograph provided by Jim.

A Hanging Question

It is amazing what can be found when you know where to look. Of course, the problem is knowing where to look in the first place.

But let's start at the beginning. I needed a break from doing some of my own research so I checked in on several of the genealogy related groups on Facebook to see if there might be some easy to answer questions that I might be able to help with. One question in particular got my attention:

James Mack, capital punishment solider, for slitting throat of a corporal, 1866 Montreal....assume he was hung.......how do I find out who he was? born? where? soldier in what army?

That definitely looked interesting. So where to look for answers concerning the event? I gave a couple of suggestions [edited for this blog]:

1. Search through the various Montreal newspapers that were published at that time. The Google Newspaper Archive has a number of those newspapers digitized and online. But since no exact date was given and the OCR used by Google is OK but not great that might take some time.
2. Search the "Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967" collection on Ancestry for a James Mack that was buried in 1866 in Montreal.

As for which army, since it is pre-confederation it would be highly probable that it is the British Army garrisoned in Lower Canada. Looking through the digitized version of the Library and Archives Canada RG 8, C Series collection might give some answers. If you haven't used this collection then I suggest that you read my post "Library and Archives Canada RG 8, C Series How-To" for a walk-through.

I then did what I usually do when dealing with an interesting event (and hangings are definitely interesting events) ... I typed the details into a Google search box.

One problem many people have when searching for information on Google (or any other search engine) is that they over think the query. In this case I just typed in the basic information that was provided:

"james mack" montreal soldier hang

The second entry on the search results page was titled "CANADA.; Execution of a Murderer--Distinguished Visitors ..." and was from the New York Times. A click on that link and up came the headline along with a byline of:

Special Dispatch to the New-York Times.
November 24, 1866

Looks like the right time frame so I clicked on the link for the high-resolution PDF of the article and there he was along with a description of his crime and also the unit he was with. [I'll leave it to you, the reader, to go to the article in question from the New York Times]

What about the Drouin Collection? What kind of search can be used to filter out all the people you don't want to see and hopefully not filter out the person you do want to find? Well, the search criteria I used was as follows:

First Name: James
Last name: Mack
Year of death: 1866
Event: Enterrement [and checked the exact box]

The first result was for a James Mack that was buried in 1866 and recorded at Basilique Notre-Dame in Montreal. I clicked on the image and even with my rusty French I could figure out it was the right person. There he was ... James Mack, a solder with the Royal Artillery, aged 24 years, that was buried on 24 Nov 1866. All these facts matched the article from the New York Times.

So where else could you look? What about a Google search for '"james mack" royal artillery 1866'  One of the search results is for the "The Lower Canada Law Journal - A Monthly Magazine of Jurispridence, volume II, July 1866-June 1867" edited by James Kirby, Advocate, published in Montreal by John Lovell in 1867. In the "December 1866 edition, no. 6", page 122 there is a write up of "THE QUEEN against JAMES MACK" along with some interesting commentary as to the possible reasons as to why Private James Mack committed the crime. There is even a write up in the 24 Nov 1866 edition of the Utica Daily Observer on page 1 where, along with the reporting of the hanging, even another tidbit of information about the crime (such as the victim's forename) could be found.