{13} Spouses of the Howards of Corby Castle: A Summary of Where I'm At With It

Entrance to Corby Castle, Cumberland

The Howards of Corby Castle are covered on pp. 2907-2908 of the Norfolk article in Burke's Peerage 107th Edition (2003). Starting this past New Year's Eve, as I've entered these Howards into my Royal Descent database, I've made posts to SocGen Med on the ancestry of eleven of their spouses:

1) Hon. Maria Archer, first wife of Henry Howard of Corby Castle (1757-1842).

2) Jane Dalston, wife of William Howard of Corby Castle (d. 1708)

3) Hon. Barbara Lowther, first wife of Thomas Howard of Corby Castle (1677-1740)

4) Eliza Minto Canning, wife of Philip Henry Howard of Corby Castle (1801-1883)

Cecilia Dowdall (née Riggs) Howard
(1844-1907)
[From the Howard-von Recum Collection
at the Library of Congress]

5) Alice Constable-Maxwell, wife of Philip John Canning Howard of Corby Castle (1853-1934)

6) Sir Henry Lawson, 3rd Baronet, first husband of Ursula Mary Howard of Corby Castle (1879-1960)

7) Lt-Col. Hugh Levin, second husband of Ursula Mary Howard of Corby Castle (1879-1960)

8) Mary Smith, third wife of Thomas Howard of Corby Castle (1677-1740)

9) Hon. Sevilla Erskine, first wife of Sir Henry Francis Howard of Munich (1809-1898)

10) Cecilia Dowdall Riggs, wife of Sir Henry Howard of the Strand (1843-1921)

11) Mary Allen Clagett, wife of George Howard of Washington, DC (1869-1919)

John Hutchinson Aspinall
(1834-1884)

Henry Mowbray Howard of Kensington (1873-1953) was the younger son of Cecilia Dowdall Riggs and Sir Henry Howard above. He married Norah Florence Annie Watson (born 28 March 1885 at Madras, India; died 1974 in Surrey, England). Her father was a Scottish officer stationed in India: Major John Dunlop Watson, born 20 October 1858 at Auchterless, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and died 28 February 1946 at Banchory, Kincardineshire, Scotland. He married 15 March 1884 at Coonoor, Madras, India, Margaret Aspinwall (born 1863), daughter of John Hutchinson Aspinwall (23 October 1834-11 September 1884), an Englishman who owned a successful mercantile business in Fort Cochin (now Kochi) in Madras, and was one of the leading town officials in the 1870s. There doesn't appear to be any Edward I lines behind either of Norah Watson's parents, so I haven't traced her ancestry further back.

Aspinwall Office Building on the waterfront in Kochi, India

Capt. Henry Edmund Howard of Wickham (1923-1999), the only son of Henry Mowbray Howard and Norah Watson above, married in Glasgow in 1945, Sheila Brown (born 15 July 1923; died 14 August 2007). Her father was Colin McNab Heys Brown, but other than the fact that he served in the British Army in World War I, I can find no further information on him: no birthdate, death date, nor the identity of his spouse.

Kenneth Charles Harold Rowe
(1913-2006)

Katherine Rowe, the wife of Maj. (Henry) Colin Francis Howard, only son of Henry Edmund Howard and Sheila Brown, is the daughter of Kenneth Charles Harold Rowe (1913-2006), who was Chairman of Rowe Brothers & Co, and the Mayor of Exeter, Devon 1962-1963, and his wife Roma Dampier Freeman (1917-2010). Again, no immediate Edward I lines are apparent, so I haven't traced her ancestry further back.

The next Howard spouse however - Edward Bruce Williams, the husband of Catherine Jane Howard, only daughter of Henry Edmund Howard and Sheila Brown - does have traceable lines going back to the Stewart kings of Scotland, and to a first cousin of novelist Jane Austen, among others. I'll explore his ancestry in the next few posts.

Cheers,                  ----Brad