E W Crewes, Mayor of Burra, South Australia

A researcher in Australia has very kindly sent me a couple of photographs she took while on a visit to a little town called Burra in South Australia.  She tells me that Burra "was settled in the mid-1800s by Cornish settlers who came as part of the gold rush. At the time it was one of Australia's largest inland towns and, as with most of South Australia, it holds on to its past and values its heritage by maintaining many of its old buildings. So it is still fairly much the same but now is mostly a tourist destination." As she was walking past one of the buildings she spotted the name Crewes on a plaque:

Ernest William Crewes was the former mayor of Burra. He was born in 1859 in Bridgwater, Somerset, and emigrated to Australia at the age of 19 with his mother and sister. An account of his life can be found on the Burra notables website. Crewes is one of the rarer variant spellings of the surname and is found mostly in Cornwall. Tom Johns documented most of the Creweses in England in his booklet Crewes of South Cornwall and their ancestors in Liskeard, Cornwall and Cruwys Morchard, Devon. I have yet to enter the details of this Crewes line into my database, and the booklet unfortunately has no index. I cannot see any reference to Ernest William Crewes in the booklet but I suspect that his line will eventually trace back to Cornwall. The Cornish Crewes are descended from the Cruwys Morchard family from Anthony Cruwys or Crewes (born c.1505), the son of John Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard via his second wife Mary Fraunceys. The link between the surnames Crewes and Cruwys has already been confirmed by a match in the DNA Project, but further Crewes participants would be most welcome.

© Debbie Kennett 2010