Family Names in the UK project

Back in April I attended the Guild of One-Name Studies conference in Warrington, Cheshire. This is the first time I have attended a Guild conference. It was a very enjoyable weekend and gave me the opportunity to catch up with some of my friends from the Guild and to make some new friends as well. One of the highlights of the conference was the talk by Dr Patrick Hanks on the exciting new Family Names in the UK Project (FanUK) at the University of the West of England (UWE) which aims to create the largest ever database of the UK's family surnames and make the results available online. Dr Hanks is an eminent lexicographer who is best known for his work on A Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford University Press, 1988) and the three-volume Dictionary of American Family Names (Oxford University Press, USA, 2003). He is now the lead researcher on the Family Names project, and is working in collaboration with Professor Richard Coates from the Bristol Centre for Linguistics at UWE. The Family Names project aims to explain the origins, history and geographical distribution of all family names in Britain that have more than one hundred current name-bearers. The database will also include stub entries for recent immigrant surnames such as Patel which is now the 32nd most common surname in Britain. In addition the project will also include surnames listed in Reaney and Wilson with between one and one hundred living name-bearers (P H Reaney and R M Wilson. A Dictionary of English Surnames. Routledge Hardback Edition, 1976; Oxford Paperback Reference, 2005). Dr Hanks explained that Reaney and Wilson's book was a heroic achievement for its time, but with the benefit of today's sophisticated resources it has become apparent that over 40% of their explanations are untenable. In addition, over 20,000 well-established English and Scottish surnames such as Adshead and Blair are missing entirely from Reaney and Wilson.

The project hopes to have entries on 40,000 names available online by April 2014. In addition, they have a further 150,000 names on the reserve list. A questionnaire in electronic form will be prepared for members of the Guild of One-Name Studies who will be invited to answer questions about their registered surname(s). The questionnaire will be carefully structured so that the researchers get the answers they are seeking rather than the information that Guild members might like to provide!

The project will record the names and dates of the earliest known name-bearers for each surname and an attempt will be made to link these references to modern forms. The frequency and distribution of each surname in the present day and in 1881 will also be recorded. Steve Archer's British 19th-Century Surnames Atlas is being used to map the distribution of surnames in 1881. One of the key resources to be used for early surname references is Carolyn Fenwick's 14th-century Poll Tax Returns (The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, three volumes, Oxford University Press, 1988). This seminal work serves as a proxy census of 14th-century Britain. Fenwick published an index of place names and a glossary of occupations, but ran out of steam and no surname index was ever published, making it a time-consuming exercise to extract data on a single surname and its variants. The UWE team have applied to the British Academy for funding for a project to create a personal names index to the Poll Taxes which, if approved, will be a valuable resource for surname researchers. Carolyn Fenwick is now retired and living in Australia but she has kindly donated her database to the researchers at the UWE.

For later surname references the project will rely on a mixture of primary data sources and the IGI. The project is currently working with Family Search to standardise the place names used in the IGI. Members of the Guild have also been invited to get involved in this project and are now in the process of checking place names in each county and "quarantining" place names which cannot be found in other sources.

The Family Names Project currently has no plans to incorporate genetic data from DNA projects. However, Dr Hanks attended Chris Pomery's talk at the conference on "The Value of DNA Projects to One-Name Studies" and he was particularly interested in the way that DNA projects have uncovered genetic matches with different surname variants such as the link between the names Crews and Screws which has been found in my own project. He was also intrigued to learn that Guild member Alan Moorhouse had a DNA match with someone with the surname Morris. Dr Hanks has asked us for suggestions as to how genetic data could be incorporated in the project, and is arranging to discuss the matter further at a meeting in Bristol with Chris Pomery which I'm also hoping to attend.

© Debbie Kennett 2011

Creus-anisy

Thanks to the help of Andrew Millard, the location of the place name Creus-anisy mentioned in my last post has now been identified as Anisy which is just north of Caen in Normandy.

We've now located a further reference to Creus-anisy in the book British Family Names – Their Origin and Meaning with Lists of Scandinavian, Frisian, Anglo-Saxon and Norman Names by Rev. Henry Barber, published by E Stock, London, 1903. The entry for the surname Cruse is as follows:

CRUSE. From Creusanisy. Norm. N.Fr. De Creus; a p.n.

De Crus in Rot. Obl. Et Fin., Devon, 1199.

In  Reaney and Wilson's A Dictionary of English Surnames (3rd rev. edn. Routledge, 2005, p119) Cruys-Straete in the départemente of Nord, midway between Dunkirk and Lille in Northern France, was suggested as a possible origin of the surname.

It is clear from the large number of genetic groups in the DNA project that the surname Cruse has multiple origins. In contrast, all the Cruwyses tested to date (apart from one known illegitimate line) fall into two distinct genetic branches, each with deep roots in North Devon. It therefore seems plausible to think that the surname Cruwys has a single origin, and that the link between the surname and the Y-chromosome was broken in one of the Devon lines. It remains to be seen whether the surname Cruwys or any of the Cruse branches originated in Cruys-Straete or Creus-Anisy. In the long run I hope that more people from France will participate in DNA testing so that we might eventually know the answer.

© Debbie Kennett 2010

More early Cruwys references

A researcher in Australia has kindly sent me some interesting early references to the surname Cruwys and variants which he found in the book The Norman people and their existing descendants in the British dominions and the United States of America published by Henry S. King & Co. in 1874. The references are as follows:

Crewe, a branch of DE LA MARE or Montalt, whose arms it bore, with a slight difference (Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 165). Crewe was in the barony of Malbanc, and was possessed c. 1150 by Henry de Criwa, who attested a charter of Hugh Malbanc. Sire Thomas de Crue was living after 1241. Hence the Lords Crewe of Stene, maternally represented by the Lords Crewe.

Crews or Crewys. Hugh de Creus and Richard de Creos were of Normandy 1198 (Mag. Rot. Scac.). Creus-Anisy was in Normandy (Ib.). Richard de Crues also occurs in Devon 1199; and the family has remained there ever since.

The abbreviation Mag. Rot. Scac. is explained as Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae sub Regibus Angliae in Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Normandie which is translated elsewhere as "Great Roll of the Norman Exchequer under the English Kings". These were the Norman Pipe Rolls of 1183-1184. I've not as yet been able to discover the modern spelling of Creus-Anisy in Normandy or its location. Does anyone have any suggestions?

© Debbie Kennett 2010

Domesday descendants

A friend in Devon has very kindly sent me a photocopy of a page containing the Cruse entries from the Katherine Keats-Rohan book Domesday Descendants. Keats-Rohan is a fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, and has pioneered the use of prosopography in historical research. If you are not familiar with the term prosopography it is explained in this Wikipedia article. Keats-Rohan has written two very important books which are very useful for anyone with a genealogical interest in medieval history:

 - K.S.B. Keats-Rohan.  Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166. Volume  I: Domesday Book.  Boydell Press, 1999, 572pp.

-  K.B.S. Keats-Rohan. Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of People Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166. Volume  II Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum. Boydell Press, 2002, 1179pp.

The entries of interest to me were found in the second volume on Domesday Descendants. I have copied the details below:

de Cruce, Rainald
Attested several of the charters of Roger earl of Hertford (d.1173), from whom he held half a fee de novo in 1166. Perhaps the same as the earl's steward Rainald. Geoffrey de Cruce held half a fee of Clare in Walton, Surrey, in 1242 (Fees, 685).

Harper-Bill and Mortimer, Stoke by Clare Cartulary, nos 28, 30-31, 36; Hart, Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, no. CXCIII; Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hall (1897), pp. 403-7; Stenton, Documents illustrative of Danelaw (1920), no. 333.

de Cruce, Ricardus
Mentioned in charters of Ranulf I of Chester as having given land at Mostyn to St Werburga when he became a monk. Father of Norman.

Barraclough, Charters of Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, nos 13, 28, 49.

de Crues, Ottuel
Attested Colne charters of c.1160. Held half a fee de novo from Oliver de Tracy of Barnstaple in 1166, at Cruwys Morchard, Devon. This was held for one fee by the heirs of Alexander de Crues in 1242 (Fees, 748). In 1242 Richard de Crues held one fee of Barnstaple in 'Nytheresse' (Fees, 773).

Fisher, Cartularium Prioratus de Colne, nos 36, 65; Pipe Roll 9 Henry II, 24-e/ht; Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hall (1897), p. 255.

I've come across early references to the surname de Cruce when searching the online Patents Rolls database. As far as I can establish there is no connection with the Cruwys family from Cruwys Morchard. It is however possible that the de Cruces are the ancestors of some of the present-day Cruse lines, which clearly have multiple origins.

Keats-Rohan makes no mention of two early references to the Cruwys surname which were quoted by Margaret Cruwys in her book A Cruwys Morchard Notebook: 1066-1874 (James Townsend and Sons, Exeter, 1939):

c. 1175 Robert de Cruwys, mentioned in a Pipe Roll of 1175, and Robert Cruwys, an undertenant of Henry Pomeroy, 1198, probably father and son.

Unfortunately Margaret Cruwys does not provide any sources for these references. The Pipe Rolls have been transcribed and published and are available at my local record office. I hope to check them out at some point. It seems strange that Keats-Rohan did not discover these other two early references.

The earliest references to the surname in the family collection of papers held at Cruwys Morchard House in Devon are found in the Tracy Deed which probably dates from the early 1200s. The names of Richard de Cruwes and Alexander de Cruwes appear as witnesses to this deed. I have made a transcription of the Tracy Deed available online on Genuki Devon which can be read here. The Tracys were a powerful baronial family. A William Tracy or William de Tracy was one of the four barons who assassinated Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, in Canterbury Cathedral on 29th December 1170. There is an unsubstantiated story that a member of the Cruwys family was present at this event.

The pedigree of the Cruwys family, as recorded at the College of Arms, is believed to commence with the Richard de Cruwes mentioned in the Tracy Deed. I have not seen any document confirming the relationship between Richard de Cruwes and Alexander de Cruwes. Richard appears in numerous documents around this time as he was a justice of the assize for the county of Devon. The earliest reference dates from 1200 when, according to Margaret Cruwys,  he was  “taken into custody being accused of the death of Jordan de la Cell on Exmoor" though again rather frustratingly the source is not given. The most recent reference I have found is in the Patent Rolls when Richard de Crues was appointed a justice for the assizes of novel disseisin at Exeter in the twenty seventh year of the reign of King Henry the Third [1242/3]. Alexander de Cruwys was probably either the brother or son of Richard de Cruwys. He is mentioned in an Assize Roll dating from 1238 which is summarised in The Cruwys Morchard Notebook. Clearly much more work remains to be done to unravel this early part of the Cruwys family tree.

© Debbie Kennett 2010