I am very saddened to learn of the death of Valerie Hedgecock née Cruse. Valerie is descended from the Ogbourne St George Cruse tree. An obituary has been published in The Argus, her local newspaper in Brighton, Sussex:
http://www.theargus.co.uk/announcements/deaths/deaths/11575181.Valerie_HEDGECOCK/
Valerie had been researching her family tree for many years, and I'd corresponded with her on many occasions. She very kindly made a generous contribution towards the Cruwys/Cruse/Cruise DNA Project, and the last time I heard from her she was still maintaining an active interest in the Cruse research.
I would like to pass on my condolences to Valerie's family and friends.
With thanks to Geoffrey Lloyd
Showing posts with label Wiltshire Cruses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wiltshire Cruses. Show all posts
Saturday, 29 November 2014
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Two more St George's Hanover Square marriages
Guild member Sian Plant has kindly sent me details of two further marriages she found as part of her Marriage Challenge for the St George's Hanover Square Registration District in London. The two marriages are as follows:
- 1906 St Gabriel: Beatrice Elizabeth Cruse, daughter of Frederick Cruse, chef, and Arthur Edward Taylor, warehouseman, son of Robert Taylor, gentleman.
- 1907 St Gabriel: Annie Belinda Cruse, daughter of Frederick Cruse, waiter, and George Albert Stevens, accountant, son of Joseph Stevens, electrician.
Beatrice and Annie are sisters. Their father Frederick Cruse was born in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in 1849, and was the son of James Cruse and Caroline Walter. Frederick married Ann Youels in 1870 in the St Giles Registration District in London. Frederick's father James was born in 1817 in Ogbourne St George, Wiltshire, the son of Jonathan Cruse and Hannah Waite. Thanks to the dedicated research of David Cruse over many years the Ogbourne St George tree is now very well documented and can be traced back to the mid-1600s. The Ogbourne St George parish registers have unfortunately not survived prior to 1664.
- 1906 St Gabriel: Beatrice Elizabeth Cruse, daughter of Frederick Cruse, chef, and Arthur Edward Taylor, warehouseman, son of Robert Taylor, gentleman.
- 1907 St Gabriel: Annie Belinda Cruse, daughter of Frederick Cruse, waiter, and George Albert Stevens, accountant, son of Joseph Stevens, electrician.
Beatrice and Annie are sisters. Their father Frederick Cruse was born in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in 1849, and was the son of James Cruse and Caroline Walter. Frederick married Ann Youels in 1870 in the St Giles Registration District in London. Frederick's father James was born in 1817 in Ogbourne St George, Wiltshire, the son of Jonathan Cruse and Hannah Waite. Thanks to the dedicated research of David Cruse over many years the Ogbourne St George tree is now very well documented and can be traced back to the mid-1600s. The Ogbourne St George parish registers have unfortunately not survived prior to 1664.
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Cruses of Imber, Wiltshire
I've been working on and off for the last couple of months on the tree of the Cruses from Imber, Wiltshire, and have now finally finished inputting all the data into my Family Historian database. David Cruse has once again done all the hard work on this tree by extracting the parish register entries and assembling the tree with the help of the censuses. Unfortunately David's copy of the tree was stored in an old drawing package on an ancient computer and it wasn't possible to transfer the tree to his new computer so it has all had to be entered from scratch. Lynn Ellison contacted me back in August about the Imber Cruses and I have now finally been able to send her a report on this line. Lynn has also kindly provided some additional information on the more recent generations of her family.
The Imber Cruse tree begins with John Cruse and Eleanor Gambon who married in about 1760. They had three children, William (born 1761), Betty (born 1763), and John (born 1775), all of whom were baptised in Chitterne, Wiltshire. Both John and Eleanor were buried in Chitterne, John in 1804 and Eleanor in 1806, but unfortunately the burial registers do not record their ages. Of their three known children only one lived to adulthood. John junior died in infancy, and Betty died in her teens. However, William, their first-born son, lived to the ripe old age of 74 years. He married Jane Potter in 1785 in Chitterne and they went on to have nine children, all of whom were baptised in the nearby village of Imber. Cruses appear in the Imber registers right through until the 1920s, and they are all descended from William and Jane. The Cruse spelling was not used consistently until 1840, and many of the parish register and civil registration entries prior to this time were recorded under the spelling Crews. Some of the earlier parish register entries were recorded as Scuse, Schuse, and Squse.
I suspect that the Imber Cruses are related to the Urchfont Scruse/Cruse tree. The John Cruse who married Eleanor Gambon is very probably the John Cruse, son of William and Elizabeth Cruse, who was baptised on 24th February 1733 in Urchfont, Wiltshire. Unfortunately the surviving parish register entries do not provide conclusive proof, and I suspect that we will have to wait for DNA evidence to provide the answer. A test is under way for a Scruse from the Urchfont tree, and the search is now on for a living Cruse from the Imber tree.
The Imber Cruse tree begins with John Cruse and Eleanor Gambon who married in about 1760. They had three children, William (born 1761), Betty (born 1763), and John (born 1775), all of whom were baptised in Chitterne, Wiltshire. Both John and Eleanor were buried in Chitterne, John in 1804 and Eleanor in 1806, but unfortunately the burial registers do not record their ages. Of their three known children only one lived to adulthood. John junior died in infancy, and Betty died in her teens. However, William, their first-born son, lived to the ripe old age of 74 years. He married Jane Potter in 1785 in Chitterne and they went on to have nine children, all of whom were baptised in the nearby village of Imber. Cruses appear in the Imber registers right through until the 1920s, and they are all descended from William and Jane. The Cruse spelling was not used consistently until 1840, and many of the parish register and civil registration entries prior to this time were recorded under the spelling Crews. Some of the earlier parish register entries were recorded as Scuse, Schuse, and Squse.
I suspect that the Imber Cruses are related to the Urchfont Scruse/Cruse tree. The John Cruse who married Eleanor Gambon is very probably the John Cruse, son of William and Elizabeth Cruse, who was baptised on 24th February 1733 in Urchfont, Wiltshire. Unfortunately the surviving parish register entries do not provide conclusive proof, and I suspect that we will have to wait for DNA evidence to provide the answer. A test is under way for a Scruse from the Urchfont tree, and the search is now on for a living Cruse from the Imber tree.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Cruse/Scruse of Wiltshire
I have been in contact with Carol Patis via the Wiltshire Rootsweb mailing list and Carol has kindly sent me details of her Cruse/Scruse tree from Wiltshire. Carol is descended from Thomas Scruse who was born on 2nd February 1799 and baptised on 10th February 1799 in Maddington, Wiltshire. Thomas was the eldest son of Oliver Cruse and Ann Feltham who married on 19th March 1798 in Maddington. Although Oliver's name was spelt Cruse in the marriage register, the spelling changed to Scruse when Thomas was baptised which is perhaps not surprising as the surname would have been spelt as it sounded and the final S in Thomas could easily have blended with the surname Cruse to form the name Scruse. The Scruse spelling was used consistently by Thomas's descendants and also by the descendants of his brother Joseph Scruse who was born on 11th August 1802 and baptised on 29th August 1802 in Orcheston St George, Wiltshire. The Wiltshire Scruses seem to account for a large majority of the Scruses who appear in the civil registration indexes from 1837 onwards, and some of this family have also settled in Australia.
Ann Feltham was probably Oliver's second wife. An Oliver Cruse married Sarah Topp on 18th April 1792 in Fishton Delamere, Wiltshire. They had three children: Thomas (baptised 3rd February 1793 in Orcheston St George), Hannah (baptised 9th November 1794 in Orcheston St George) and Elizabeth (probably born in 1796 in Orcheston St George). Sarah and the three children died on 13th January 1799 in Orcheston St George. The sad story of their deaths is recorded in the following poignant entry in the parish register:
As an interesting aside on the surname Scruse I have discovered that Scruse is the maiden name of Katherine Jackson, the mother of the singer Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson's grandfather, Prince Albert Scruse, was apparently born on 16th October 1907, and his Scruse family appear to be from Alabama. There seems to be very little information on this line and it would be interesting to do further research to see if there is any connection with the Wiltshire Cruses/Scruses, perhaps through a family of slave owners.
Ann Feltham was probably Oliver's second wife. An Oliver Cruse married Sarah Topp on 18th April 1792 in Fishton Delamere, Wiltshire. They had three children: Thomas (baptised 3rd February 1793 in Orcheston St George), Hannah (baptised 9th November 1794 in Orcheston St George) and Elizabeth (probably born in 1796 in Orcheston St George). Sarah and the three children died on 13th January 1799 in Orcheston St George. The sad story of their deaths is recorded in the following poignant entry in the parish register:
Thomas, Hannah and Elizabeth Cruse, son and daughters of Oliver and Sarah Cruse who were burnt to death by their mother in a fit of insanity Jan 13th and buried Jan 15th. Sarah the wife of Oliver Cruse and mother of the above three children died in consequence of a wound she gave herself on Jan 13th and was buried 24th.It has not yet been possible to determine the ancestry of Oliver Cruse with confidence. An Oliver Cruse was baptised on 30th November 1747 in Netheravon, Wiltshire, the son of Robert Cruse and Hannah Silverthorne. This Oliver married Joyce Peircey on 12th May 1770 in Orcheston St George. No record has been found of any children from this marriage. Joyce died in 1791. Did this Oliver Cruse then go on to marry Sarah Topp in 1792? By this time Oliver would have been around 44 or 45 years old. I only have details of Oliver's three marriages from various indexes and there is no indication that he was a widower, though this information was not always provided in the early registers. If the three Olivers are indeed all one and the same person then we can trace the line back a further two generations to Robert Cruse and Sue Hill who married on 9th October 1665 in Urchfont, Wiltshire.
As an interesting aside on the surname Scruse I have discovered that Scruse is the maiden name of Katherine Jackson, the mother of the singer Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson's grandfather, Prince Albert Scruse, was apparently born on 16th October 1907, and his Scruse family appear to be from Alabama. There seems to be very little information on this line and it would be interesting to do further research to see if there is any connection with the Wiltshire Cruses/Scruses, perhaps through a family of slave owners.
Friday, 28 March 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
The Cruses of Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
David Cruse has kindly sent me details of another Cruse family which he has been working on. This Cruse line is from the small market town of Wootton Bassett in North Wiltshire The tree begins with Gabriel Cruse who married Alice Loader on 20th January 1615/6 in Wootton Bassett. They had one son, Gabriel, baptised rather hastily on 14th April 1616 just three months after their marriage, and four daughters, Elinor, Elizabeth, Anne and Avis. Gabriel junior married Catherine Helliar on 10th June 1634 in Mildenhall, Wiltshire. Gabriel and Catherine had two known sons, Francis, baptised on 26th March 1657, and William, baptised on 18th February 1665/6. Francis went on to marry and to produce three sons. The younger son, William, disappears from the Wootton Bassett records. It is possible that he is the William Cruse who was buried in Ogbourne St George in 1717, who is at the head of our large Berkshire tree, but a lot more research is presently needed to prove or disprove this hypothesis. The name Cruse makes its final appearance in the Wootton Bassett registers with the burial of 21-year-old William Cruse on 28th September 1805. There are a number of wills on the National Archives' Documents Online website which relate to this family which I hope to explore in due course. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any further information. Are there any living descendants out there?
Friday, 25 January 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)