Marriage certificates from the Shrewsbury tree

Just before the cost of ordering certificates from the General Register Office went up at the beginning of April I put in a large £119 certificate order. I purchased three Cruwys marriage certificates for some puzzling Cruwys marriages which I had been unable to place. Outline details of the marriages are provided below:

- 1846 The Register Office, Shrewsbury, Shropshire: Thomas Cruwys, widower, tailor, son of Thomas Cruwys, innkeeper, and Hannah Walton, spinster, daughter of Corbet Walton, tailor

- 1860 The Parish Church, Chatham, Kent: Henry Cruwys, Private 53rd, son of William Cruwys, dyer, and Sarah Maile, daughter of Edward Maile, shoemaker

- 1860 Register Office, Stoke Damerel: Henry Cruwys, widower, sergeant in ??? Regiment, son of William Cruwys, master dyer of Wellington, Shropshire, and Ruth Badger, widow and licensed victualler, daughter of William Hugoe [?]

Although the marriages took place in different parts of the country it turns out that all three marriages relate to the Cruwys tree from Shrewsbury in Shropshire which I wrote about in an earlier posting.

The 1846 marriage certificate of Thomas Cruwys is particularly useful as it gives us the name of his father, though I am still not as yet able to link him into one of the other Cruwys trees. In the 1841 census Thomas was living in Shrewsbury with his presumed wife Hannah and three children. It would therefore appear that both of Thomas's wives shared the same Christian name. However, I have not been able to find any record of the death of the first Hannah in the GRO indexes. Thomas died in 1848 but I cannot find his widow Hannah in any of the subsequent censuses, and there does not appear to be a matching death registration on Free BMD.

The Henry Cruwys who features in the other two certificates I purchased is, I believe, the grandson of Thomas and Hannah Cruwys of Shrewsbury. Henry was born on 7th November 1833 in St Chad, Shrewsbury, and was the son of William Cruwys (1809-1870) and his wife Elizabeth. William was born c.1809 in Shrewsbury, but I have been unable to find a record of his baptism to confirm his parentage. Henry Cruwys and his second wife Ruth Badger née Hugoe can be found in the 1861 census in St Chad, Shrewsbury, hiding under the mistranscription of Crump. Henry was a soldier, but I cannot read the name of his regiment. Henry and Ruth then seem to disappear from the records. I can find no trace of them in any of the subsequent censuses and there is no record of their deaths in the GRO indexes.

This Shrewsbury line is particularly problematic and I would be very pleased to hear from anyone researching this tree or any of the other associated surnames.

© Debbie Kennett 2010