Researching the HOWARDs- Part 1: Don't be afraid to ask the locals!

Gear up for a long post - but I think this story is worth it. My grandfather, father, and brother all had/have the middle name HOWARD, after my great-grandmother Malvern Blanche Howard. When I decided to get started on the HOWARD line, my great-grandmother and my grandfather were already gone. My grandmother filled me in on what she knew of her husband's HOWARD ancestry.  I got the following information:

• " The 'Howards of Virginia' were a very wealthy and important family."
•  "Pop's grand-daddy James Enos Howard was a doctor who used to light his pipes with $100 bills."
• "James Enos Howard wrote a book once,  I think there might be a copy of it somewhere in the house."
• "Malvern Howard was disowned when she married Ray Welsh, a conductor on the B&O railroad."
• "James E. Howard offered to pay for his grandson's (my grandfathers) college tuition if he would only drop the last name WELSH and use only Ray Howard. My grandfather refused and worked in a steel mill his whole life."

OK, that and a few dates/places seemed like a lot of good information with which to get started.  The book "In the Beginning" by James Enos Howard [1916, Roxburgh Press, Boston, Mass. Library Of Congress # BS1235.H68} about the biblical book of Genesis was indeed written by my GG-Grandfather.  Since the family had only the one copy,  I have a photocopy of the book.

Next, my mother decided that since James Howard was the doctor in Mill Run, PA,  we should take a trip over to find his grave.  I said that we had no idea what cemetery he was buried in, and her reply was that there's probably only one in a town that small anyway.  So, off we went one Saturday.  We arrived in "town" which is pretty much one road,  and couldn't seem to find any cemetery, so we stopped and asked someone which way to the cemetery.

 "Which one?,"  he said. 
"There's more than one?"
"Well, who are you looking for?", he asked. 

My thinking was that I'm looking for a man who died in 1934,  it's not like this guy would know him;  but my mother didn't miss a beat and piped up "Old Doc Howard."
"Oh, my father knew him. He'd be buried in the Baptist Cemetery."  And he gave us directions.

Flabberghasted but happy, I followed his directions and in no time we found his grave. Not fifteen minutes later, this same man pulls in behind us with his car.  Mr. Dull as it turns out, had more information to share that he thought we'd want to know.  His 90-year-old dad lives with him and he went inside to tell his Dad after giving us the directions.  His Dad relayed these two stories and so he came up to the cemetery to share them with us. 

1) Doc Howard had stitched up Mr. Dull's father when he was a little boy after the sled he was riding wedged him under a barbed-wire fence, and

2) that this was a story that Doc Howard himself liked to tell:

Mrs. Shipley had asked him to come around (remember doctors used to make house calls) and check on her teenage daughter.  The girl was prone to bouts of nausea that seemed to come and go. It was like no flu she'd ever seen.  The doc examined her and informed Mrs. Shipley that her daughter didn't have the flu or any other ailment, she was pregnant.  The indignant woman told him that just wasn't possible, as her daughter was now and had always been a good girl.  'Why she's never even been with a boy'.  At this point, he shook his head, laughed and said that "God hadn't done it that way in 1900 years, and he'd guess that wasn't going to change now."

So what did I learn on that trip?  Birthdate and death date from the tombstone, but priceless stories from Mr. Dull.  Don't be afraid to ask the local folks!