Written by Sally-- Thanks!
The Howells and Brewers come from Bradford Upon Avon in England, and the surrounding areas. The nearest large city is Bath (famous for its ruins of Roman baths). William Howell married Sophia Brewer in 1852 in the Holy Trinity Church in Bradford Upon Avon (Avon=river in Celtic, and indeed, it is on a river). We visited there when my mom took Miranda and I to England, specifically to see where our family came from. It’s a charming little town in which it is not hard to imagine what it looked like 100 years ago.
The Brewer and Palmer lines (Sophia’s parents) go back to the region of Somerset—a seaside region that Jane Austen actually writes about in the same time period that our ancestors were there (I think in Persuasion particularly). There is a seaside tourist resort town called Weston-Super-Mare where Jane Palmer (Sophia’s mother) was born. In this region they are famous for making cheddar cheese, particularly in these ancient caves, also called Wookey Holes, near the seashore where the internal temperature stays the same year round and is ideal for making
cheddar (I think it was 52 degrees). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wookey_Hole_Caves). As this Wikipedia article also states, they were famous for paper mills, which are unfortunately all closed down now. And, of course, it was largely an agricultural area.
Ernest Frederick Howell (b. 17 Dec 1864) is the son of William Howell and migrated to the US,
in 1873 (acc to the 1910 US Census), meaning he would have been 9. More likely he came in 1894, as the 1920 Census says. His older brother Walter and his wife, Sarah, were already here, too (per 1920 census they came in 1881). The records say their mother, Sophia, died in England in 1900, and his father (no location) in 1901 (but it seems likely he would have been there, too). He married Donnie’s mother, Mary Belle Keen, in Cinncinnati, Ohio in 1898. They went first to Fruit Heights, Alameda in the San Fransisco area, where their first daughter Ida Etta died (stillborn or soon after). They moved to Los Angeles, where in 1900 another daughter was born—Ruth Ernestine, who died before turning two. Grandma Pat says that after her Grandma Mary got pregnant again with Donnie, she went back to Ohio to have the baby. She wanted to be near her mother after having lost the first two. Donnie always said she should be considered a native Californian because they lived there before and after she was born, and being born in Ohio was just a fluke.
In LA, they lived in the big house that Grandpa Pat later grew up in with her uncles Bill and Dick. We had a dollhouse modeled after it that Uncle Bill made. The original house is gone now, but I think it was in Highland Park, or thereabouts. The 1910 census says Ernest was a window-dresser for a grocery and wine store there in LA. They had his wife Mary Belle Keen’s parents (John Morris Keen and Emily B. Sholl) and older brother (Arthur) living there with them. There was also a boarder, Horace Young—a carpenter. By 1920, Ernest is a salesman in a grocery store. They have the two boys, Bill and Dick, and the boarder—Horace Young—is still living there at age 70. He must’ve felt like family at that point.
Mary Belle Keen was the daughter of John Morris Keen and Emily Sholl. John Morris had married her older sister Mary Catherine, who died after 2 and ½ years of marriage in 1870. The next year John married Emily (on most census records she is called Emma, perhaps because her mother is also Emily). The Sholls were trunk manufacturers in Ohio. On the 1880 Census, John Morris and Emma and children are living with her parents—the George Washington Sholl family. The Sholls seem to be wealthy enough to have had an Irish maid living with them in 1880. But George Washington Sholl dies 5 years later. By 1900 (per census), John Morris is living in the Old Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home in Erie, Ohio. This wikipedia article explains more about what those were: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_soldiers%27_home#List_of_historic_old_soldiers.27_and_sailors.27_homes_within_the_Unite
d_States).
John Morris Keen was a Civil War vet from the Ohio 50th regiment, company E (found
on familysearch civil war records)—which came from Highland County, where he lived. He
would’ve been 19 when the regiment was formed in 1862. This regiment seems to have first
defended Ohio, and then was sent down South and took part in Sherman’s burning of Atlanta
(http://www.ohiocivilwar.com/cw50.html). It is unclear why John Morris was living at the veteran’s home in 1900 (age 57). Perhaps they were so poor that he went to live in the Old Soldiers’ Home while Emma went home to Winston Place? or maybe he was ill or disabled? In 1900, Emma is living with her now widowed mother Emily and working as a dress maker. Her son, Arthur (age 24) is with her, working as a sign salesman. Their daughter Mary Belle (Grandma Mary) is already married and living in LA. Curiously, the census says Emma is a widow, but John Morris’s says he’s married (census error?). By the 1910 census they are all living together with their daughter Mary Belle in the LA house, including Mary’s brother Arthur. I wonder if they all came back with Mary once Donnie was born. It certainly is hard to keep a grandmother away from her beautiful grandchildren!
