Portsea marriages

Before Christmas Guild member Michael Bliss kindly sent me the details of two marriages he found in the Portsea Marriage Challenge. I have put outline details below:

- 1865 St Mary's, Portsea: James Cruse, carpenter, son of Jacob Cruse, gardener, and Harriet Dye, widow, daughter of William Gooch, a gardener. (Cruses of Imber, Wiltshire)

- 1868 St Thomas, Portsmouth: Mary Cruse née Blood, widow, daughter of Thomas Blood, a labourer, and John Waller, Corporal in the 35th Regiment, son of Samuel Waller, a tailor.

The James Cruse who married Harriet Dye in 1865 is the son of Jacob Cruse and Lydia Meaden. Jacob and Thomas are descended from the Cruses of Imber, Wiltshire. I wrote about this line back in September 2008. We have not yet located a descendant from the Imber Cruses to take part in the DNA Project. A sponsored test is available if an appropriate candidate can be found. If you know of anyone do get in touch. It would be interesting to find out if the Imber Cruses are related to the two other Wiltshire lines which have already been tested - the Ogbourne St George line and the Scruses of Orcheston St George, both of whom we now know are not related on the direct male line.

I have no further information at present on Mary Cruse née Blood.

I have been getting somewhat behind with the certificates received from the various Guild Marriage Challenges, and will be posting further details of a number of other marriages in the next week or so. Watch this space!

Crowse of Worcestershire

Guild member Ian Preece has very kindly found two CROWSE marriages for me in his recent Marriage Challenge for the Upton on Severn Registration District. Both marriages took place in Worcestershire. The details are as follows:

- 1846 The Parish Church, Eldersfield: John Crowse, yeoman, son of William Crowse, yeoman, and Elizabeth Shipton, daughter of Thomas Shipton, yeoman

- 1866 The Parish Church, Great Malvern: Fanny Augusta Crowse, daughter of John Crowse, a miller, and Joseph Parry, farmer, son of John Crowse, miller.

CROWSE is a rare variant spelling which I have not yet had a chance to research. There are only a handful of occurrences of the name in the English and Welsh birth, marriage and death indexes, and just a few isolated occurrences of the surname in America and Canada. Worcestershire is some distance from the Cruwys epicentre in North Devon, and it is not yet known if the two surnames are related. I would be very pleased to hear from anyone researching the CROWSE surname.

Social networking

The new February issue of Family History Monthly is now on sale at newsagents in the UK. I have an article in this issue on social networking which focuses in particular on the use of Facebook and Twitter. My own copy of the journal has not yet arrived in the post but I'm hoping that it should be here soon now that the snow is finally starting to melt and the backlog of post can finally be cleared. You can see the full contents on the FHM website here.

I've set up a number of groups on Facebook for the many variants of the surname. You can find links to all these groups on the right. If you haven't already signed up we look forward to welcoming you. Facebook now has over 350 million users. If you are looking for someone you therefore stand a good chance of finding them on Facebook. If they are not on Facebook then their children or other relatives almost certainly will be.

Twitter is more of an acquired taste but if you follow the right people it is a good way of keeping up with all the latest genealogy news. If you are on Twitter and would like to follow me you can find me here.