Joseph Leigh Howell is also remembered on the Northop Memorial because he was a native of Northop, having lived with his family at Celyn Farm from infancy.   Joseph appears on the 1891 census in Northop, aged 16, and thereafter is thought to have have been in South Africa.

His link with Hope and Caergwrle is less clear.  His parents, Gilbert and Mary Emma (nee Simpson) were from Hawarden and Pontblyddin respectively.  They had farmed in Bagillt (in the 1870s), and in Northop (in the 1880s and 1890s).  Later in the 1890s they lived in Warwickshire. – their daughter Ada Annie had married, (in Temple Grafton near Alcester), a Mold chemist called John Wynne Williams in 1895.  By 1901 Ada and John were living in Mold with their young family, but Gilbert and Mary, now retired, were living  living with their youngest daughter, Mabel Gertrude, in Ufton St Michael near Leamington Spa.  In 1911 Gilbert, Mary and Gertrude were living in Hope Village. Gilbert died in 1914, and Mary in 1922.  Joseph’s name appears on the Hope and Caergwrle memorials as this was no his mother’s village.  It is to be hoped that she lived long enough to see the memorials erected.

The sons of John and Ada, Gilbert Edward Wynne Williams and John Wynne Williams, continued as Chemists in Mold.  Gertrude remained single, and was living with Ada and John in Pwll Glas, Mold. when the 1959 register was compiled.

Josephs brother Gilbert Frederic married Jane Myfanwy Lloyd in Holywell in 1913.  Gilbert was a farmer, and is recorded as travelling frequently between England and various African ports.

In 1900 Joseph’s sister Emily Maria married a Farmer, Thomas Metters, and settled in Harbury near Leamington Spa.  She died in 1926.