Cruses in the Mormon Migration Index

The new Mormon Migration Index website provides details of around 90,000 members of the Church of the Latter-day Saints who crossed the Atlantic between 1840 and 1860. The website is based on material which was previously available on the Mormon Immigration Index CD, published in 2000. Passenger lists can be searched by surname. Transcriptions of letters, diaries and extracts from autobiographies relating to the voyages have also been made available online.

There are three Cruses in the database: Charlotte Cruse (1821-1905), Julia Matilda Cruse (1823-1916) and Mary Cruse (1812-1851). They were all from the village of Boxford in Berkshire.

Charlotte Cruse and Julia Matilda Cruse were sisters. They were the daughters of James Cruse (1782-1857) and Mary Joyce (1784-1857) who married in 1807 in Hampstead Norris, Berkshire. Charlotte and Julia were the youngest of seven children. Charlotte was born on 31st March 1821 in Boxford. Julia was born on 17th June 1823 in Boxford. They sailed to America on the James Pennell departing from Liverpool on 2nd September 1849 and arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 22nd October 1849. Charlotte married William Washington Thorpe in 1850 in St Louis, Missouri, and Julia married Amos Howe in 1851, also in St Louis, Missouri. The two sisters and their husbands subsequently moved to Salt Lake City in Utah.

Mary Cruse was the first cousin of Charlotte and Julia. She was born in 1812 in Boxford, Berkshire, and was the daughter of Thomas Cruse (1763-1841) and his second wife Elizabeth Pigot (c.1780-1852). Mary married Thomas Tanner (1807-1878) on 4th February 1831 in Newbury, Berkshire. Thomas and Mary Tanner, together with their children Thomas, James, George, Ebenezer, Joseph and Alma, emigrated to America on the Salt Lake trail in 1851. They sailed from Liverpool on the Olympus on 4th March 1851 arriving in New Orleans on 27th April. Mary sadly died in St Louis, Missouri, on 11th October 1851 shortly after their arrival. Mary appears in the Mormon Migration Index under her married name, Mary Tanner, but she is also mentioned under her maiden name in the accounts of the voyage of the Olympus which can be seen here.

Edwin Cruse the law clerk

The nineteenth-century newspaper collection has revealed an interesting story about Edwin Cruse from the Berkshire Cruse tree. Edwin Cruse was the son of George Cruse, a butler and gamekeeper, and Sarah Chivers. He was born in May 1849 in Boxford, Berkshire, and baptised on 1st July 1849 at St Andrew's Church, Boxford. Edwin went to work in London as a clerk in a solicitor's office and ended up in prison after being found guilty of forging two cheques. The story was reported in the Daily News on 26th February 1868.

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT

Edwin Cruse, 18, a gentlemanly-looking youth, described as a law clerk, pleaded guilty to two indictments charging him with forging a cheque for 81l, and another for 50l.

Mr. Sleigh was instructed to prosecute. The prisoner was defended by Mr. Cooper.

In this case it appeared that the prisoner was in the service of Messrs. Lewis and Co., solicitors, Southampton-Street, as clerk, and he took advantage of the opportunity the position afforded him to obtain access to the cheque-book of his employers, and draw two cheques for the amounts mentioned upon Messrs. Coutts and Co., and obtained the money, the whole of which seemed to have been squandered away within a very short period.

Mr. Cooper addressed the court in mitigation of punishment, and said that the prisoner was very respectably connected, and he was one of eleven children, and his being placed in his present position had been the cause of the deepest distress to those with whom he was connected. He had gone into the situation he occupied fresh from the country, and had unhappily fallen into bad company, and this had led him to commit the act which he now most deeply deplored. On the grounds of the youth of the prisoner and his previous good character, he entreated the court to pass a lenient sentence.

The Recorder, after conferring with Alderman Causton, addressed the prisoner, and said he was unable to discover any ground for departing from the usual sentence in such cases. He was in a good position, and, being the clerk to a solicitor, he must have been perfectly well aware of the nature of the crime he was about to commit. He appeared, however, to have committed two distinct forgeries, and obtained 130l, by means of the forged instruments, and the whole of the money seemed to have been squandered away in the course of six weeks. He felt, therefore, bound to pass upon him the sentence of five years' penal servitude.

Edwin was in fact one of 12 children, though only eight of his siblings were still living at the time of his trial. Three of his brothers died in infancy within a few weeks of each other in August 1859, and they are all buried at St. Gregory's Church in Welford: John died at the age of eight and was buried on 6th August, George died at the age of just three weeks and was buried on 11th August, and Arthur died aged four and was buried on 31st August.

The 1871 census reveals that Edwin was sent to the Male Convict Prison in Gillingham, Kent. He was described on the census page as a law clerk aged 21. If Edwin served his full five-year term he would have been released from prison at the end of February 1873. He seems to have found himself a bride remarkably quickly as he married just one month later. His new bride was a 20-year-old girl from Devizes in Wiltshire by the name of Charlotte Rosanna Wild. They married on 31st March 1873 in Welford, Berkshire, where Edwin's parents were now living. After their wedding Edwin and Charlotte must have travelled immediately from Welford to Liverpool to catch the steamship the Hibernian to emigrate to America. The date of departure is not known but the passenger list for the Hibernian shows that the ship arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on 23rd April 1873. Edwin and Charlotte both appear on the passenger list. Edwin is described as a clerk. Somewhat surprisingly they booked an intermediate passage rather than sailing in steerage.

We pick up their story again in the 1880 American census. Edwin and Charlotte are now living in the 8th Ward in Precinct 4 in Baltimore. Edwin, 31, is working as a book agent, and Charlotte, 25, is 'keeping house'. They have two children, George, 6, and Ernest, 4, who were both born in Maryland. Julia Wilson, 23, a seamstress, is also living in the household with the family.

Unfortunately most of the 1890 US census was destroyed in a fire and the census for Maryland has not survived. I have however been able to locate Edwin in some directories at around this time. In the 1890 Baltimore City Directory an Edwin Cruse is listed at 831 W Barre, Baltimore, Maryland, with a business called The Sun, which is possibly a reference to the Baltimore Sun newspaper. There is also an Edwin Cruse listed in the Washington DC Directory the same year. He appears as a clerk residing at 729 5th Northwest, Washington, DC. In the 1891 Washington DC City Directory Edwin Cruse was again listed as a clerk but he had now moved to 447 Florida Avenue Northwest.

The final sighting of Edwin is in the 1900 American census. Edwin, 51, is now working as a patent ally and living in Kenilworth Street, Washington, DC. Charlotte must have died because Edwin now has a new wife, Jennie, 42, who is from Connecticut. The census helpfully tells us that they had been married for 10 years. They have two children: Daisy B Cruse, born in October 1880 in Connecticut, and Catherine Cruse, born in June 1894 in Maryland. Daisy is probably Edwin's stepdaughter as the census indicates that her parents were both born in Connecticut, whereas Catherine's father was born in England and her mother was born in Connecticut. In the 1900 census Edwin's son George is working as a district lawyer in Manhattan, New York. He is married to Nellie, 26, and they have a six-month-old son called Donald. I have not been able to find any trace of Edwin's younger son Ernest Cruse in 1900.

After 1900 the trail goes cold and I have not been able to locate Edwin and his family in any of the later censuses, and I cannot find any record of his death in the available online records. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has further information about Edwin and his children.

A DNA breakthrough

We have another interesting match from the DNA Project. The results are now through for the tester who is descended from the Berkshire/Wiltshire Cruse tree. He matches on 36 out of 37 markers with the tester from the South African Cruse tree. According to the Family Tree DNA Tip calculator the probability that the two men share a common ancestor within eight generations is 88.06%. Within 12 generations the probability increases to 97.1%. This result is particularly exciting because so far all attempts to find the origins of the South African tree have proved fruitless. I wrote about the search for Henry Cruse in one of my first blog postings entitled Shipwrecked in South Africa. Since that time countless records have been searched, particularly in London. A number of potential candidates have been identified but all the Henrys found so far have had to be eliminated as we have been able to track them through the English censuses and civil registration records. The DNA match is particularly welcome as it gives us a much more specific focus for the research. It was stated on Henry's death certificate that he was born in Great Britain. We will now be able to narrow the focus of the research and look specifically at the Wiltshire and Berkshire records in the hope that one day we will find the elusive baptism.

Cruse resources

I am very grateful to David Cruse who has very kindly shared with me some of the files and databases which he has compiled and collected over the course of the last 30 years. Thanks to David's hard work I now have a database of all the Cruse references from the General Register Office indexes for births from 1837 to 1900, marriages from 1837 to 1940 and deaths from 1837 to 1930. The GRO indexes cover births, marriages and deaths for both England and Wales. These indexes are the backbone of a one-name study and are a very important resource. It is hoped that in the long term it will be possible to complete the extraction of Cruse entries from the GRO indexes right through to the present day. David has also sent me a substantial collection of transcriptions from parish registers and other sources for the Cruse surname. The largest collection is from the county of Berkshire, but there are also a sizeable number of transcriptions from Wiltshire, Berkshire, Somerset and London. He has also sent me photocopies of all the certificates he has acquired over the years in his research. I am now in the process of collating all the data and updating my files.

Although the one-name study originally focused specifically on the surname Cruwys I found that as my research progressed I was becoming increasingly involved in work on various Cruse lines, and I have now registered Cruse as a variant spelling with the Guild of One-Name Studies. Cruse was the more usual spelling prior to the introduction of civil registration. Some families – generally those with their roots in Devon – changed the spelling of their name to Cruwys, whereas in other lines the Cruse spelling became standardised. Some Cruse families have always believed that they were related in some way to the Cruwys Morchard family, but so far we have not yet had a single Cruwys/Cruse match in the DNA project. Indeed, the early results suggest that Cruse is a multiple-origin surname as none of the lines tested are related.

Cruses of Berkshire

I am very fortunate that David Cruse has already done most of the hard work on the Cruses of Berkshire over the last twenty years or so. He has very kindly given me a large tree with details of the big Berkshire family from which nearly all the Cruses in Berkshire originate. I have now finally finished inputting all the data into my family history program so that I can prepare reports on this line if any enquiries are received. The Berkshire tree can be traced back to William Cruse and Mary Cooper who married in Compton Beauchamp, Berkshire, on 10th November 1706. William is possibly the William Cruse, son of William and Katharine, who was baptised in the nearby Wiltshire parish of Ogbourne St George in 1680.

William Cruse and Mary Cooper had five known children: William (1707-1798), Miles (1709), Mary (1714), George (1719-1719) and Richard (1720-1757). The children were all baptised in the small village of Aldbourne in Wiltshire. Aldbourne is very close to the Berkshire border and the nearest town is Hungerford. William and Mary seem to have lived for their entire married life in Aldbourne. Their eldest son, William, married Ann Long in 1733 in Aldbourne. William and Ann went on to have ten children. Their eldest seven children were baptised in Aldbourne and their youngest three children were baptised in Ramsbury, Wiltshire. William and Mary's second son, Miles Cruse, married Jane Brown on 23rd April 1728 in Ramsbury. Their twelve children were all born in Ramsbury, but later generations gradually moved across the county border into West Berkshire, settling mainly in Boxford, Welford, Lambourn, Hampstead Norris, Kintbury and Speenhamland. The descendants of Miles Cruse and Jane Brown account for most of the Cruses found in the Berkshire records.

Interestingly the surname is often spelt Cuss, Curse or Curs in the early Wiltshire records with the Cruse spelling predominating from the 1800s onwards. In one of the later generations the spelling seems to have changed to Cruce. George Cruce and Sarah Chivers married in 1846 in Welford, Berkshire. The births of some of their children were registered in the name Cruce and this spelling appears to have been adopted by their descendants.

John Cruse and Mary Rook

I have recently made contact with David Cruse who has been researching the Cruse family name for many years and has done a considerable amount of work on the Cruses of London, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Somerset. David has very kindly sent me outlines of the various trees which he has worked on.

David is descended from John Cruse and Mary Rook, who married on 30th April 1814 in Whitechapel, London. At the time of the marriage John was around 32 or 33 whereas Mary was only about 16 or 17. Mary was already a few weeks' pregnant and it's quite possible that the marriage took place without the permission of Mary's parents. After the marriage they returned to Mary's home parish of Bourn in Cambridgeshire. Their daughter Marian was baptised on Christmas Day 1814 at St Mary's, Bourn. Their son Edward was baptised one year later on 26th November 1815 in Bourn. Shortly thereafter John and Mary seem to have decided to return to London. We have records of two further children, Matilda, born about 1820 in St Luke's, Finsbury, and Thomas John Cruse, born about 1821 in St Luke's. By 1841 the family were living at James Street, Finsbury. John and his son Thomas were both working as carmen (drivers of horse-drawn vehicles for delivering goods and parcels) and Mary and her daughter Matilda were silk weavers. By 1851 they had moved to 15 Memel Street, Finsbury. John, now 70, was a labourer and Mary, 54, was a fruiterer. Their daughter Matilda, 31, was still living at home and was working as a silk winder. John died shortly after the 1851 census.

Normally it is a straightforward matter to trace a birth for those people who are included in the 1851 census. However, John Cruse has been somewhat more problematic. In 1851 he gave his place of birth simply as Berkshire, but in 1841, when living in Finsbury, he indicated that he was born "in the county". Working on the assumption that the 1851 census was more accurate David Cruse has spent many years researching the Cruses of Berkshire in an attempt to discover John's origins. In the course of his research he has assembled a large tree comprising most of the Cruses in Berkshire. The only likely candidate he has been able to find is John Cruse who was baptised on 23rd February 1783 in Lambourn, Berkshire, the son of Edward and Mary Cruse. John Cruse married Ann Young on 12th October 1806 in Lambourn. They had one son John, born in 1811. John's baptism is recorded in the Coleshill parish registers. Coleshill was then in Berkshire but is now part of Oxfordshire. John Crewes was privately baptised on 28th April 1811 and received into the church on 16th June 1811. There are no further Crewse/Cruse baptisms in Coleshill and no burials so we assume that John and Ann must have moved away from the parish shortly after the birth of their son. If this John Cruse did indeed marry Mary Rook in Whitechapel in 1814 then Ann must have died some time between 1811 and 1813. There are no matching burials in the Berkshire Burial Index, which now covers most of Berkshire, so it would appear that they left Berkshire and possibly moved to London. There is however no easy way to check the London burials so the proposed scenario will be very difficult to prove. Unfortunately the Whitechapel Marriage Register provided no clues as the vicar only recorded the names of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage. However, the fact that John was so much older than Mary does suggest that it was his second marriage.

Mary Rook has been much easier to trace. She was baptised on 26th February 1797 in Bourn, Cambridgeshire. She was the daughter of Thomas Rook and his second wife Sarah Adams, who married on 17th May 1796 in Bourn. By an astonishing coincidence, one of the witnesses at their wedding was Edward Bodger who is my husband's great-great-great-great-grandfather. Edward Bodger was a tailor, and the father of fourteen children. His son John Bodger (my husband's ancestor) was the head gamekeeper to the Earl de la Warr at Bourn Hall.