Malta

We were away on holiday in Malta over half-term and I've had a lot of catching up to do since we've been back, hence the lack of posts. If I haven't replied to your e-mail as yet then I promise I will do so shortly! In the meantime I'm posting a few photographs of my Maltese highlights. Malta was once the home of the Knights of St John who have left a remarkable architectural legacy. Unfortunately today much of the island is over-developed and is scarred by back-to-back apartment blocks and hotels, which form a continuous sprawl along most of the coast from St Paul's Bay down to Valetta, the fortified capital built by the Knights after the Great Siege of 1565. The photograph below shows the Siege Bell Monument in Valetta which commemorates the award of the George Cross to Malta in World War II and honours those who lost their lives during the Siege of Malta from 1940 to 1943.The Palazzo Parisio in Naxxar is the finest stately home on the island. It was built in 1733 by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, and was lavishly refurbished by the Maltese banker and philanthropist, Giuseppe Sciculuna, at the end of the nineteenth century. The formal gardens contain an exotic collection of Mediterranean plants with a colourful backdrop of bougainvillea on the walls.Gozo is Malta's sister island, and is just a short 30-minute ferry crossing from Malta. It is much greener and much less spoilt than Malta. The Azure Window (below) in Dwerja on the west coast of Gozo is one of the island's natural wonders.

Cruwys of Witheridge

I was very pleased this week to make contact with Roy Cruwys in Australia. Roy is a descendant of the Witheridge Cruwys tree. He is the grandson of Thomas Edwin Cruwys and Edith Baker, whose Golden Anniversary celebrations were the subject of an earlier post.

Roy has a letter dating from 1988 from his Uncle Ernie which provides a list of all the Cruwys birthdays. Ernie copied out the birthdays from a book belonging to his mother Edith Cruwys née Baker. By combining these birthdays with my extractions from the GRO indexes between the two of us we have now managed to come up with a comprehensive list of names and dates for the Witheridge family. Roy has also kindly sent me a few family photographs, three of which I am reproducing below. The first photograph shows Thomas Edwin James Cruwys and Edith Baker on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary. This photograph was use by the Tiverton Gazette to accompany their article.The second photograph is of Roy's father, Victor William Cruwys, in his RAF uniform. Flight Sergeant 530492 V W Cruwys served out in the Middle East and Egypt in World War II, and was awarded the Africa Star campaign medal.Victor was one of seven boys. One of the boys, James, died as a baby, but the other six brothers all served their country in World War II. We already knew from the Tiverton Gazette article that two of Victor's brothers, Thomas and Sydney, were prisoners of war. Now it transpires that a third brother, John Edwin Cruwys, was also a prisoner of war. Sadly John contracted some sort of infectious disease in prison and died shortly after coming home in 1947. The final picture is of the wedding of Victor William Cruwys and his bride Edith Moorhouse. They married in 1943 in Manchester while Victor was still in the RAF.

DNA project - going live!

I am pleased to report that the DNA project is now up and running with Family Tree DNA. As group administrator I have the facility to compile a profile page and a simple web page, both of which are now online and can be accessed from here.

My father has agreed to take the test so I will be ordering a kit on his behalf. Jim Crews in Georgia is being tested separately for the Wiregrass Families DNA group in south-east Georgia, USA, and has agreed to share his results with me. He is very excited about the prospect and is hoping to find some evidence of native American ancestry. Now it is just a question of recruiting further participants and waiting for the results to arrive.

DNA project

On Friday I went to an illuminating talk by Chris Pomeroy on the subject of DNA testing for family historians. Chris is a fellow member of the Guild of One-Name Studies. He has pioneered the use of DNA in genealogy and is the author of DNA and Family History. Fellow researcher David Cruse was also at the talk. We were both inspired by the presentation and are now convinced of the need to set up a project for the Cruwys/Cruys/Cruse/Crewes surname. DNA testing will not provide all the answers but will be a useful pointer for further research and we hope that it will help to break down some of our brick walls.

I have started to make initial enquiries about setting up a project with Family Tree DNA, the largest DNA testing company in the world with the largest database on the market. DNA projects have already been registered with this company for three similar surnames which might or might not be related: Kruse of Denmark, Crews/Screws in the USA and Cruise of Ireland. The company provide the facility for results to be checked with existing results on their database. If two people have identical or near identical results they will inform both parties, provided that both people have signed the appropriate release form. Crews researchers in America were surprised to discover that they were genetically related to people with the surname Screws.

The DNA test used for genealogical purposes is the Y-DNA test. The Y-chromosome is handed down unchanged from father to son except for the occasional mutation. Therefore only men who are directly descended in the male line are eligible. (The family at Cruwys Morchard in Devon are descended in the female line through Harriet Sharland née Cruwys (1771-1847) and so cannot be tested for the purposes of this study.) The Y-DNA test examines a series of markers on the Y-chromosome, each of which is assigned a numerical code. People with an identical or near identical sequence of matching marker numbers will share a common male ancestor.

The test itself is quite harmless and very quick and easy to do. Each sample is assigned a unique number, and the testing facility do not have access to any names. DNA is tested only for the specified number of genealogical markers. The test cannot be used for legal purposes such as establishing paternity or involvement in a crime, and will not provide an indicator of a genetic predisposition to a particular disease. The cost of the test varies according to the number of markers. Family Tree DNA are currently offering four different tests for 12, 25, 37 and 67 markers, and the pricing is structured accordingly. The 37-marker test is recommended to provide sufficient information to identify the time frame to the common ancestor and to identify possible major branches in the ancestral tree. It takes around seven weeks to receive the results of the tests.

Once the project is up and running it will then be a question of finding suitable candidates to be tested. David Cruse and Pieter Cruse have already indicated that they would be willing to be tested, and I'm hoping that we will be able to recruit many more people. If anyone is interested please get in touch and I will endeavour to answer your questions. In the meantime watch this space! I've provided below a selection of links to websites which provide further information on the subject for those who are interested:

Family tree DNA

Oxford Ancestors

World Families Net

http://www.ybase.org/

The Sorensen Foundation

The Genographic Project

DNA of famous people

The Journey of Man video on You Tube