Howard Family of Bridgewater Massachusetts

Question

In his diary, Increase Mathews wrote about going with his future brother-in-law Martin Howard to visit Judge Howard. I'm trying to determine if these men were related. Many of Abigail Willis's sisters married into the Howard family and one married a Packard. From Mitchell's Bridgewater history, it appears these two families were intermingled. His history records 82 descendants of John Howard who settled in Bridgewater in 1651. Many of these people do not have a WikiTree profile.

To figure out the Howard relationships, I thought I would add these profiles using Mitchell's history as my starting point, then adding sourcing with FamilyTree, but I want to be sure that what I add doesn't conflict with the existing one-name-study.

Comments

I looked at the John Howard Jr. profile and it lists 12 children, but he only had 6 children. It appears possible that a wrong person was merged into his profile. It's a PPP profile, so I don't want to change it.

Since I want to quickly find the relationships between certain Howards, I decided to create a spreadsheet based on Mitchell's history. I'll upload it to Google docs when I have it completed and post a link here.

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I completed the John Howard Descendants spreadsheet and uploaded it to Google docs. I'll also post a note on the John Howard Jr. profile page.

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I agree that his childrens list is wrong. Abraham Howard who is on there was the son of Phillip Comfort Howard and Mary Ann Child.

Answer 1

I started the Howard Name Study. Im closing it down. There are too many Howard lineages and conflicting sources.

Aurora

Answer 2

I assume that Aurora and Diane have discussed the Howard name study with Ros Haywood, who is active in WikiTree One-Name Studies. It is my understanding that Howard and Haward and Hayward are considered to be variations of the same name, so there may be a need for coordination across these names.

Comments

No Ellen, I didn't discuss this with Ros, but I did post a comment and a link to my spreadsheet on John Jr.'s profile.

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I suggested contacting Ros because of her experience with name studies in general and with the Haywood Name Study in particular. That Haywood Name Study page identifies Hayward as a related surname to Haywood, and since Hayward and Howard are identified as variant forms of the same name, I think that collaboration with Ros could be very worthwhile for you.

PS (added to original comment): Also see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Howarth_Name_Study -- another related name.