Edward Thomas Cruse in World War I

David Cruse has been having a sort out of some old files and has sent me copies of the correspondence he had back in 1999 with a lady called Rita Thyer in New Zealand. Rita is the granddaughter of Edward Thomas Cruse (b. 1880 in Bermondsey, London) and Edith Louisa Carswell. Edward is descended from the John Cruse and Mary Rook line of London and Cambridgeshire. When researching this family previously I had not been able to find any trace of Edward Thomas Cruse after the 1891 census. Edward would have been 21 in 1901 and I suspect he might have been away from home serving in the Boer War. Fortunately however Ancestry now have the World War I army service records available online and luckily Edward's records were amongst those which have survived and are included in the collection.

Edward would have been 34 years old at the outbreak of the First World War. From his service records I've discovered that he enlisted on 5th September 1914 at which time he was described as a printer. He began his service career as a private in the Royal Berkshire Regiment. He was promoted to Corporal on 21st December 1915 and to Lieutenant Sergeant on 31st December 1915. He was then promoted to Sergeant on 16th April 1916. On 1st April 1916 he was transferred to the Training Reserves. In a reorganisation he was posted to the Hampshire Regiment on 1st November 1917, and finally on 26th November 1918 he was transferred to the Labour Corps. He was discharged on 1st June 1919. His medical report on discharge shows that he was suffering from hallus valgus (bunions) on his left foot. He had had an operation to remove the head of a metatarsal bone. He had also had an attack of influenza in January 1919 following which he suffered from a cardiac irregularity, though no irregularity was found at the time of the examination. He was classified as being 20% disabled.

The service papers also most helpfully provide information about Edward's wife and children. Edward claimed to have married Edith Louisa Carswell on 4th February 1905, though the marriage is recorded in the GRO indexes in the first quarter of 1906 in the West Ham Registration District. Edward had seven children:

- Arthur Edward Cruse, born 10th November 1901
- Grace Edna Elizabeth Cruse, born 15th Feb 1903
- Edith Lilian Cruse, born 20th July 1906 in Upton Park, London
- George Thomas Cruse, born on 22nd August 1907 in Stratford, London
- Rose Louisa Cruse, born on 30th November 1911 in Stratford
- Louisa Elsie Cruse, born on 14th November 1914 in Stratford
- Ernest Alfred Cruse, born on 19th Feb 1916 in Stratford

Edward's eldest two children, Arthur and Grace, were from his first marriage to Janet Frances Amelia Gillard. Edward and Janet married in 1901. Janet sadly died in 1904 when Grace was only around a year old.

At the time of Edward's discharge from the army the family address was 2 Hotham Street, Bridge Road, Stratford, London E15. Edward apparently left his family after World War I and never returned for reasons which are unclear. I wonder if anyone has any further information on Edward and his family. I would be particularly interested to hear from any of his descendants in New Zealand. © Debbie Kennett 2009-2012

Shoreditch marriages

A batch of faux marriage certificates has arrived from Guild member Howard Benbrook following his recent Marriage Challenge for the Shoreditch Registration District. I have provided an outline of the certificate details below together with the name of the tree, where known, in brackets:

- 1840 St Mary Haggerston – Sarah Dunsford Cruwys, daughter of William Cruwys, wheelwright, and Joseph Lake, tailor, son of Joseph Lake (Thorverton tree)

- 1845 St Leonard's, Shoreditch – Thomas Cruse, cellarman, son of John Cruse, carman, and Mary Ann Furze, braidmaker, daughter of John Goode Furze, shoemaker (John Cruse and Mary Rook line)

- 1849 St Leonard's, Shoreditch – Frederick Martin Cruse, cooper, son of George Cruse, cooper, and Harriett Huntley, sempstress, daughter of Thomas Huntley, fishmonger

- 1855 St John the Baptist, Hoxton – George James Fordree, carman, son of George James Fordree, general dealer, and Martha Cruse, daughter of Edward Cruse, carman (John Cruse and Mary Rook line)

- 1856 St Leonard's, Shoreditch – George Cruse, scaleboard cutter, son of John Cruse, box maker, and Mary Ann Kelley, servant, daughter of John Kelley, dyer

- 1857 St John the Baptist, Hoxton – Henry Cox, firewood cutter, son of Henry Cox (deceased), firewood cutter, and Mary Ann Cruse, daughter of Edward Cruse, carman (John Cruse and Mary Rook line)

I have sent copies to those people who are researching these lines. If you are interested in any of the above marriages and would like a copy of the certificate please get in touch.

George Cruse and Mary Ann Dickson

I've received details of another Cruse family in London which I've not yet been able to place in any of the existing London Cruse trees. This line begins with George Cruse who was born about 1814 either in Westminster, London, or St George's Hanover Square (the place of birth is different on the two census entries we have for him). George married Mary Ann Dickson, the daughter of John Dickson, a baker, at St Margaret's Church in Westminster in 1839. According to the marriage certificate George's father was Charles Cruse, a bookbinder. There were a number of bookbinders in the Rode tree from Somerset, some of whom moved to London, but at present it is not possible to see a connection between the two lines. George showed no interest in following his father's trade. He seems to have worked in a variety of jobs, and is described variously as a labourer, a drug porter, a drug warehouseman and a chemist.

George and Mary Ann Cruse had five children, one son and four daughters. Their only son, George, died at the age of four from water on the brain. Their second daughter Frances Caroline Cruse (born c. 1847 in Westminster) emigrated to Australia in 1871. She married John Hay (born 1834 in Aberdeen, Scotland) in 1877 in Melbourne. John and Frances Hay subsequently moved to New Zealand, and many of their descendants still live there today. According to family legend John Hay was reputed to have run away to sea as a young boy. He was supposedly shipwrecked, and was abandoned by a man who later became Mayor of Timaru, a small city in New Zealand. There was a famous incident in which John confronted His Worshipful Honour the Mayor, poking him in the stomach with his cane, and saying "you left me to drown". It has not yet been possible to substantiate this story. George and Mary Ann's youngest daughter, Alice Elizabeth Cruse (b. 1852 in Westminster) married George James Dyke, a waterman, some time before 1874 though there is no record of their marriage in the GRO marriage index. George and Alice Dyke settled in Limehouse in the East End of London. We currently have no information on the whereabouts of the other two daughters Mary Ann Cruse (born 1842 in Westminster) and Harriet Amelia Cruse (born 1849 in Westminster).

The London records at the London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Library are in the process of being digitised, and I'm hoping that we will then finally being able to make some progress with all these London families. The first records are due to be made available early in 2009 on Ancestry. More information about the digitisation project can be found here.

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.

John Henry Cruse, fishmonger and pocket book maker

Michael Freeman has spent a further two days in London at the Guildhall Library and the Metropolitan Archives in search of the family of Henry Cruse the shipwreck survivor in South Africa. Michael had previously identified John Henry Cruse as the possible father of the South African Henry. He has now spent a considerable time researching John Henry and his family, but so far Henry’s baptism remains as elusive as ever. In the meantime I thought other researchers might find the story of John Henry Cruse of some interest.

John Henry Cruse was born about 1785. We do not know where he was born as he died before the 1841 census and no record of his baptism has yet been found. John Henry married Ann Parker on 2nd August 1812 at St Margaret Lothbury in the City of London. They were married by banns. John was a bachelor and Ann was a spinster. They were both from the neighbouring parish of St Christopher Le Stock. St Christopher Le Stock is in the centre of the square mile of the City of London. It was united with its neighbouring parish St Margaret Lothbury in 1781. The witnesses were Eli Noone and Ann Davis. Eli Noone is probably the churchwarden or verger as he was also a witness at the next wedding. We have not yet been able to identify Ann Davis. The first clue as to John Henry’s occupation is found in the baptismal registers of St Mary at Hill in the City of London, where John Henry was described as a fishmonger when his eldest daughter was baptised in 1813. The City of London is of course the home of Billingsgate Fish Market and John Henry almost certainly worked at the market where he perhaps had his own market stall. At that time the market was situated in the streets around Billingsgate Wharf by Lower Thames Street in the shadow of London Bridge. Fish and seafood were sold from stalls and sheds around the 'hythe' or dock. A purpose-built market was not constructed until 1850 and this building was demolished in 1873 to make way for the present building in Lower Thames Street which is now the largest indoor fish market in the country. John Henry worked as a fishmonger at least until 1817, but some time between 1817 and 1820 he made a rather surprising career move and became a pocket book maker. He had quite possibly inherited the business following the death of a family member. We have found records of four children born to John Henry and Ann:

- Ann Margaret Cruse, born on 5th July 1813 and baptised on 28th November 1813 at St Mary at Hill in the City of London. John Henry and Ann were living at Harper Lane at the time of the baptism.

- John Edward Cruse, born about 1815. No record of his baptism has yet been found. He was buried on 23rd February 1817 at St Michael, Crooked Lane, in the City of London. He was said to be 22 months old. John Henry and Ann were now living at Fan Court, Miles Lane, Thames Street. Miles Lane is one of the roads running off Thames Street and is next to Fish Street Hill, the approach road to the old London Bridge. Miles Lane can clearly be seen in an 1827 map of the City.

- Hannah Cruse, born on 30th June 1817 at Fan Court, Miles Lane, and baptised on 21st September 1817 at St George the Martyr, just across the Thames in Southwark.

- Thomas Cruse, born in the parish of St Michael Crooked Lane (probably at Fan Court, Miles Lane) and baptised on 17th September 1820 at St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, on the other side of the river. Thomas was buried on 3rd March 1822 at St Michael, Crooked Lane. His age at burial was 17 months.

Ann Cruse née Parker died in 1836 and was buried on 20th March 1836 at St Michael, Crooked Lane. She was said to be 46 years old.

The following year, on 2nd July 1837, John Henry’s younger daughter Hannah married William Henry Willett, a coach painter, at St George in the East in Stepney. John Henry was one of the witnesses. John Henry also lived to see the marriage of his eldest daughter Ann Margaret. She married Richard Wrigglesworth, a glass cutter. The marriage took place some time before the beginning of civil registration on 1st July 1837 though the marriage has not yet been located and the precise date is not known.

Just three months after his daughter Hannah’s wedding John Henry died suddenly of apoplexy on 9th October 1837. He was said to be 52 years old. At the time of his death his address was given as 4 Little College Street, St Michael, College Hill. The informant of the death was his daughter Ann Margaret Wragglesworth [sic] of 2 St Dunstan's Alley. John Henry was buried at St Martin, Vintry, on 15th October 1837. Unusually the burial records for this church also record the cause of death and provide confirmation that John Henry died of apoplexy.

John Henry and his family are a very good example of the difficulties faced when researching in London. The City of London, the oldest part of the capital, was formerly a county in its own right. In 1811 there were 122,924 people living in the densely populated City of London District (the area which is currently under the jurisdiction of the Corporation of London and which is slightly larger than the medieval City). As a comparison, the nineteenth-century population of the City is roughly equivalent to the present-day population of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. There were over 100 churches in the square mile of the City of London, and of course many more churches in the surrounding area. The three baptisms which we have so far located all took place in different churches, and the baptism of John Edward Cruse has still not been found. Michael Freeman searched through 17 burial registers before he finally struck gold in the eighteenth register and found the burials of Ann and her two sons at St Michael, Crooked Lane! No doubt there were other children and any information would be gratefully received.

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.

Archelaus Cruse of St Botolph, Aldersgate

Michael Freeman has sent me a copy of the will of Archelaus Cruse. Archelaus was a newsvendor with a business in Little Britain in the parish of St Botolph, Aldersgate, in the City of London. He died in 1838 but his will was written four years earlier in 1834. His business seems to have been a very profitable concern as he left sizeable bequests to his children. The will is particularly informative as Archelaus mentions not just the names of his children but those of his grandchildren too. I have therefore been able to construct a detailed tree for this family. Archelaus's eldest son, Henry Simpson Cruse, was a bookbinder and stationer with a business at 5 Compton Street, Clerkenwell. Henry Simpson Cruse had a son, Henry who married Ann Brading in 1840 in Clerkenwell. Henry junior cannot be found in the 1841 census and is one of the candidates to be our South African shipwreck survivor.