Cruwys of Wiveliscombe, Somerset

I was delighted to receive in the post at the weekend a bumper package of information from Vanessa Goodwin. When I first began my Cruwys research in 2002 Vanessa was the first researcher I contacted, and it seems rather fitting that I was the recipient of her first ever e-mail last week. Vanessa has been researching her family tree for some 25 years and has amassed a considerable amount of information in that time. Her family originated in Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon. They moved to Oakford, and then crossed the border into Somerset and settled for some considerable time in Wiveliscombe. The Cruwys Farm House still stands in Wiveliscombe and is now a Grade II listed building. In 1794 John Cruwys of Wiveliscombe brought a Bill of Complaint in Chancery against Henry Shortrudge Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard claiming descent from the "Cruwys of Cheriton Fitzpaine in the County of Devon Shoemaker mentioned in the Settlement of Samuel Cruwys Esquire" who was mentioned in the will of John Cruwys, Clerk of Cruwys Morchard. Although John's ancestors can indeed be traced back to Cheriton Fitzpaine his case was not successful but the documents nevertheless provide us with some valuable genealogical information.

It's going to take me some time to incorporate all of Vanessa's new information into my files but I've already been able to solve two long-standing mysteries. Back in March 2004 I was contacted by Heather McCulloch in British Columbia, Canada. Heather asked if I knew anything about a Nellie Stirling, born in 1887 in Forfar, Angus, Scotland, who married an unknown Cruwys and settled in South Africa. At the time I had no reference to such a marriage in my files but, on working my way through Vanessa's tree, I came across a James Cruwys who married a Nellie Stirling in South Africa. The name began to ring a bell and fortunately I was able to locate Heather's original e-mail and re-establish contact with her to tell her the good news. James Cruwys, born in 1881 in Newport, Monmouthshire, was the son of William Benjamin Farmer Cruwys and Elizabeth Brankley. James and Nellie married in 1912 in South Africa and had three daughters, Helen Betty, Margaret Elaine and Joan Megan. Margaret married Harold Bierman who went on to become Head of the South African Navy. The National Archives of South Africa have three files relating to James's family, including his estate papers from which we can deduce that he died in 1930.

The other breakthrough came quite by chance when looking through the online transcriptions of the Chipstable parish registers which have kindly been provided by David Cheek. Another of my contacts, Pauline Steadman, has traced her family back to James Cruwys and Sarah Allen who married on 26th March 1837 in Wiveliscombe. On all of the censuses James claimed that he was born in Wiveliscombe around 1815-1816 but we'd been unable to find any record of James's baptism in Wiveliscombe. I was looking at the Chipstable transcriptions to get confirmation of the baptism of John Cruwys, the eldest son of Isaac Cruwys and Ann Burton, who was baptised on 29th July 1810 in Chipstable, as this family were included in Vanessa's tree. I duly found John's baptism but I was very excited to discover in addition a cluster of other Cruwys baptisms including that of James Crews, the son of John and Sarah, who was baptised on 5th February 1815. Chipstable is only a few miles away from Wiveliscombe so I feel sure that we have finally found the elusive baptism. As a bonus I've also been able to link Pauline's James in with the rest of the Wiveliscombe/Fitzhead tree. James's parents were John Cruze and Sarah Curry who married on 25th March 1814 in Chipstable.

Snowdrops in Kintbury

Yesterday as a break from the usual CRUWYS research I went on a trip to Kintbury and East Woodhay where I was able to meet up with my friend Polly. Kintbury was the home of my maternal SMART, FAITHFULL and TIDBURY ancestors. My great-great-great-great-grandparents Benjamin SMART and Susanna FAITHFULL married at St Mary's Church, Kintbury, on 14th December 1819. They had eight children, all of whom were born in Kintbury. Benjamin was swept up in the machine breakers' riots which shattered the peace of this quiet Berkshire village for a few days in November 1830. By this time Benjamin had five children and Susanna was pregnant with their sixth child, Caroline, my great-great-great-grandmother. Life was hard for agricultural labourers such as Benjamin. Prisoners in Reading Gaol apparently received a better diet than the average agricultural labourer. The harvests of 1828, 1829 and 1830 had been very poor after three wet summers in a row. The winters of 1828-1829 and 1829-1830 were particularly harsh, and the latter was reportedly the worst for nearly a hundred years. The introduction of cheap new threshing machines on the local farms meant that the labourers were unemployed for most of the winter months and were forced to rely upon meagre hand-outs from the parish rate for survival. The so-called Swing Riots took place throughout the southern counties of England but the villagers of Kintbury were treated particularly harshly for their actions. Troops were called out from London to break up the disturbances, and the rioters were rounded up and arrested. Benjamin was arrested but not committed for trial, being "discharged under his own, or someone else's recognizance". Some of the other villagers were not so lucky. William SMITH alias WINTERBOURN, the leader of the Kintbury rioters, was hanged at Reading Gaol on 11th January 1831. Twelve men from Kintbury were transported to Australia and two were sent to Reading Gaol for a spell of hard labour.I spent some time looking round the churchyard exploring the gravestones. I could not have picked a better day for my visit. It was a beautiful clear sunny day and, as can be seen from the photograph, the churchyard was covered in a carpet of snowdrops. I found what appeared to be five FAITHFULL gravestones but sadly they were so weathered and worn that it was barely possible to make out any of the inscriptions. Benjamin and Susanna SMART are both buried in Kintbury but their graves are unmarked. I was told that William SMITH alias WINTERBOURN has a gravestone near the entrance of the church but I was unable to locate it. Visiting the village today it is hard to believe that it was once the centre of such dramatic events.

Cruwys birth maps

I have again been experimenting with Genmap UK and this time I have prepared a map showing the distribution of Cruwys births in England and Wales from 1837 to 2004 by Registration District. As can be seen the vast majority of Cruwys births took place in the south-west of England, South Wales, London and the Home Counties.As London is somewhat crowded I thought it would be helpful to zoom in to give a better idea of the distribution of the name in the capital.The data used to compile these maps were extracted from the GRO indexes for England and Wales. There were a total of 524 births. This figure includes a number of deviant spellings and, in addition, two births for which no registration record has yet been located. The breakdown of spellings is as follows:

Cruwys 497
Creuse 1
Crewys 4
Cruwyd 1
Cruyes 1
Cruys 12
Cruyse 1
Crwes 2
Crwse 1
Crwys 3
Crys 1

See also the 1881 Cruwys distribution map and the posting on 1881 distribution.

The Cruses of Rode, Somerset

Russell Cruse has been in touch concerning my posting about Archelaus Cruse the newsvendor of St Botolph, Aldersgate. Russell has been researching the Cruse family from Rode in Somerset. He has in his tree an Archelaus Cruse who was born in 1760 in Rode. It would appear that this Archelaus is the one who moved to Aldersgate and became a newsvendor. It is such an unusual name that it seems most unlikely that there could be anyone else of the same name living at the same time. The evidence seems even more convincing as the Archelaus born in Rode had a brother called Jeremiah born in 1758, and Archelaus the newsvendor named his second son Jeremiah, presumably after his brother.

Jeremiah Cruse from Rode was a well respected land surveyor and also the head of the Frome Lodge of Freemasons. His son Robson Cruse, born in 1785 in Rode, had a distinguished naval career. He was at the first Battle of Copenhagen on 2nd April 1801 and was a midshipman on the HMS Tonnant at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805. He subsequently became a Lieutenant and was involved in the dramatic rescue of the officers and crew of the Nightingale when it ran into trouble off the coast of the Isle of Wight in 1829. One of Jeremiah's grandsons, George Cruse, born in 1818 in Frome, Somerset, served in the King's First Royal Dragoon Cavalry Regiment, fighting at the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October 1854 and later at the siege of Sebastapol.