Notes for Robert Howell




			The Ancestors of H A R R Y F E R G U S O N J O H N S O N of North Carolina

Notes for Robert Howell

"Uncle Bob - Robert - never married. When the word "hippie" came into being that is what I compared him to. He worked as an accountant, in a brewery, in the wheat fields and even taught one year at a junior college. About the time I was born, he moved back and lived the remainder of his life with Mother and Daddy [Mr. and Mrs. John Vincent Howell.] He died in December of 1962."
From a letter written by Margaret Howell Perry, October, 1996

The following letter was written by Celia Howell Bourne to Robert Howell. As of 1999, the letter is in the possession of Alice Howell Powell of Amherst, Virginia, USA:

Box 227
Lloydminster Sask.
Jan 24th 1950
My dear Mr. Howell
My brother Arthur came up last week with your letter, to see what I could remember as I did not come to Canada till 1910 when I was eighteen & he came out about 1900 at the age of ten to my father Edward Howell (called Ted) who came about 1898. Arthur really has a wonderful memory tho & was very interested to hear from you & would really like to come to Va to see you but as he only has two weeks holiday it is hardly likely that he can go so far. It seems quite a coincidence that that same Poole paper was quite casually sent out to me (& I haven't had one for, say, ten years) & naturally was struck by so much mention of the old days & quite casually passed the paper on to Arthur. Well, he was interested enough to write to this Mr. Moore from whom he received your address. Well now to go back to you, our grandfather was Edward Howell brother to your grandfather Thomas Howell.
Did not your father Thomas Howell Jr. marry a Miss Allen from Poole & wouldn't it be her niece Julie Allen who sent you that paper?
I cannot place the names Mrs. Elizabeth Howell nor William Howell but the names of Janey Pemmy Celia & Thomas I seem to have know all my life. The house you mention on Wimborne Rd would that be Planefield do you think? We don't seem to have any such photos I expect Auntie Sis must have had them tho.
Your letter is in front of me as I write which accounts for these remarks being quite scrappy. It seems also you must have had an Aunt Celia & a sister Celia. That being my name I have always known there was a Celia Howell in the States but did not know there were two. We lived at Planefield till I was nearly four years of age. I can distinctly remember there were people coming to tea with us from America Janey & Pemmy & Celia Howell who had the same name as I.
Because of this girl I argued with my Mother that I should wear my best hat, (which was one of those round straw hats with two ribbon tails down the back & H.M.S. Pinafore printed in front as seen on pictures of Queen Victoria's children) But of the visitors themselves I haven't the faintest recollection. But Arthur remembers being in the field & watching them come up the road. He is older than I. Then when I was something like ten or twelve years old & Mother & I were living in Poole with Grandma & Grandpa Coles I remember John Howell coming to Poole from Newark, N.J.
That must be the Uncle John that you speak of & who is still alive now. He gave me a dollar & sent me one at intervals thru Auntie Sis as he wrote to her for years. I do not remember how long he was in England or where he went but he called at Grandpa Coles a few times & if he still writes to somebody by the way of Bishop I think it must be Auntie Julia's children or even grandchildren since Auntie Julia was my Father's eldest sister & her children were all older than we are. Also I remember a Mrs. Tom Howell (your Mother I'm pretty sure) coming home once or twice from Va to see her Mother, Mrs. Allen. The Allens I knew pretty well. Miss Sophie Allen lived with & looked after her mother, also Mr. Robert Allen with his two children Leslie & Julie. Leslie a little older than I & Julie about the same age or slightly younger. Old Mrs. Allen gave me a bound volume of the Girls Realm & a red leather address book when I came to Canada, the address book I have yet. Mrs. Tom H gave me her address & I think wrote to me once or twice & it was my fault (neglecting to answer) I expect that caused the correspondence to drop. On the way to Canada in 1910 I stayed from Monday to Friday in Liverpool with Mrs. Tom H twin sister I believe & I think the name was Gray. Mr. Gray had one or two chemists shops. Mrs. Gray very kindly put me on the boat & saw that I found the people with whom I was traveling.
Leslie Allen at that time was working for the C. N. R. in Winnipeg he had been sent from England to a farm in Ontario but farming wasn't up his alley at all. He met me & looked after me for the few hours I was in Winnipeg & I saw him once a year afterward. He had been to Edmonton to look into real estate as Ed. was enjoying a boom. The C. N. R. train stopped ten minutes at our station to take on water. He had written us & so we, Eddie, Arthur, & I were on the station to meet him & talked to him for about an hour instead of ten minutes as there was something the matter with the train. But since that I have lost touch with him. There was another Miss Allen married to a missionary in Jamaica, while she was home on furlough the husband perished they lost all their belongings in a dredful (sic) hurricane. She never returned to Jamaica but was also living with old Mrs. Allen.
A year or two before 1910 there was a Celia Howell & I think she was a great pet of John Howell, who was governess to a little boy on a trip to Europe & old Mrs. Allen was so looking forward to seeing her as they stopped over in London but Celia could not get the time off which was a pity as her Grandma was 80 or over. That would be your sister wouldn't it? I saw her photograph.
There are three of us Eddie is the eldest with three children the eldest of whom is Joan 27, a graduate of the Edmonton General Hospital, she is to be married next Spring; Bob 23, just finished University Engineering & Mary 21 who was married last Spring.
Arthur has no children & his wife comes from Sheffield Eng. & strangely enough so does my husband. We have no children either but at two year intervals we adopted two little girls, three months old. They are both married now. Helen lives in Lloydminster & has two children, a boy 2 1/2, a girl 6 mths. Pamela was married last year & lives in Redwater 45 miles north of Edmonton one of the new oil districts opened up round Edmonton. She was also a graduate of the Edmonton General Hospital.
Lloydminster has also had its little oil flurry & has grown from a quiet little country town to a town full of strangers & much building.
The population has risen to over 4000.
Your temperatures sound delightful for since two weeks before Christmas ours have steadily been 20-50o below zero & not warming up much in the daytime. Such a long steady spell grows tiresome.
My father died about four years ago this Feb & Uncle Arthur the youngest of the family died at Swift Current the October before & his wife this last October. Fred the other brother died as quite a young man, in fact before his third child Ruth was born. She is dead now there is only little Fred & Dorothy left of that family. Dorothy is my age & little Fred about a year younger but they are both in England.
I hope you will find something of interest in this letter & that I am correct in my notions as to your family.
I should like also to meet you & to see some of the photos but my husband also gets only two weeks holiday & it would be a pretty hard job to wangle him into such a trip anyway.
Hoping you have got rid of your cold.
Yours sincerely
Celia A. Bourne
(Mrs. Lionel M. Bourne)
We all agreed that's a pretty nice looking niece you have.
I have an iron stand made in the old foundry at Waterloo & also a box (trunk) made there for one of the girls Auntie Julia, Auntie Sis or Auntie Lou when they went away to boarding school.

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