Yellacat Ranch

Tag: Howery

  • Untangling the Story of Lawrence (Alloway) Howery

    I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. I often get messages from other genealogists who are confused by the case of Lawrence (Alloway) Howery. And to be fair, the confusion is understandable—his life story involves adoption, name changes, and multiple family households. With some luck, this post can serve as a one-stop explanation. The next time someone asks, I’ll just send them here.

    Early Life and Family Tragedy

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

    Tragedy struck early. Lawrence’s mother, Charlotte, died on April 13, 1921, just three months after his birth, reportedly due to complications from childbirth. With their mother gone and their father unable to care for them all, the five children were placed with different families.

    Here’s what I’ve been able to trace:

    • Ralph was raised by his paternal uncle, Ernest Alloway.
    • Blanche and Harry were adopted by an unidentified family in Humphrey, Nebraska.
    • Elsie remains a mystery. I haven’t yet discovered what happened to her.

    The Howery Adoption

    Lawrence was adopted by his paternal aunt Bertha (Alloway) Howery and her husband, Rev. Elmer Philip Howery. That’s where his name change begins—from Lawrence Alloway to Lawrence Howery.

    The Howerys had several children of their own: Margaret (1906), Dudley (1910), Kenneth (1916), Wilma (1918), and later Warren (1923). They had also lost a child, Mary (1912–1914). But the adoption of Lawrence likely followed the heartbreaking death of their baby Charlotte, born April 17, 1921—just days after Lawrence’s own mother died. Charlotte only lived a few months and died July 12, 1921. It’s not hard to imagine the emotional motivation for Bertha to take in her orphaned nephew soon after.

    Unfortunately, stability was short-lived. Rev. Elmer Howery died the following year, on November 22, 1922, in Fremont, Nebraska. Bertha gave birth to another child, Warren, in January 1923, and remarried in March 1924 to Evi Long, with whom she had one more child, Carrol, in December of that year.

    Somewhere during that tumultuous period, Bertha appears to have given up custody of Lawrence.

    Life in California: The Wright Years

    By 1930, Lawrence was living in Chico, California with Eldora (Howery) Wright and her husband Sam Wright—Eldora being Bertha’s sister-in-law. In the 1930 U.S. Census, Lawrence appears in their household under the name Lawrence Wright, with no indication that he was adopted or not their biological child.

    We know from family stories that the Wrights had moved from Nebraska to California in the 1920s. It’s likely that Lawrence came with them as a small child and was raised as their son.

    This explains why, throughout his school years in California, he was known as Lawrence Alloway Wright:

    • He graduated from Central Grammar School in Chico on June 1, 1935 under that name.
    • He graduated from Chico High School in May 1939, again as Lawrence Alloway Wright.

    Military Service and a Return to “Howery”

    In 1939, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army, Lawrence settled on the name Lawrence Howery—likely the name most easily supported by whatever legal documentation he had. He was living in Butte County, California (likely still Chico) at the time and listed on his enlistment papers as having completed a year of college.

    He appears in the 1940 Census as Private First Class Lawrence Howery, stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was still there during the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and survived.

    In the following years, his name usage varied:

    • A 1943 article in the Chico Record refers to him as Lawrence Wright Howery.
    • His marriage announcement in the same year lists him as Lawrence (Howery) Wright.
    • A 1946 article about his training as an airline mechanic for Western Airlines again refers to him as Lawrence Howery.

    By the end of the war in 1945, when he was discharged, he formally used the name Lawrence Howery, including on his draft registration.

    At some point—possibly during the postwar years when applying for Social Security—he obtained a delayed birth certificate under the name Lawrence Oscar Howery, listing Elmer Howery as his father.

    Clearing Up the Confusion

    The confusion surrounding Lawrence comes down to this:

    • He was born Lawrence Oscar Alloway, son of Ira and Charlotte.
    • He was adopted by Bertha and Elmer Howery, becoming Lawrence Howery.
    • He was later raised by Eldora and Sam Wright, and used the name Lawrence Alloway Wright for much of his youth.
    • In adulthood, especially after military service, he returned to using the name Lawrence Howery—ultimately supported by a delayed birth certificate.

    Each name he used reflected a different household, relationship, and chapter in his life.

    His Profile and a Call for Collaboration

    I’ve compiled what I’ve found into a FamilySearch profile to make Lawrence’s story easier to access and share:
    🔗 Lawrence Oscar Howery on FamilySearch

    If you have any records, newspaper clippings, family stories, or other pieces of this puzzle, I’d love for you to contribute them directly on FamilySearch. With people like Lawrence—who moved through several homes, names, and roles—collaborative research is the only way to fill in the gaps and do justice to the full complexity of a life lived.

    Revised Aug. 6, 2025.

  • Almost Métis

    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

    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.

    More Information

  • Some Anniversaries

    Some Anniversaries

    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.

  • Hazel Mary Howery March 13th 2005

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYC-MFwB3kU&feature=autoshare//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js