Cruwys of Mariansleigh

I was very pleased to find in my inbox when I returned from holiday an e-mail from Samantha Hill in New Zealand. Sam is a regular reader of Cruwys News and has been researching her Cruwys family for a number of years. Sam is descended from the Mariansleigh Cruwys family. She is the great-granddaughter of George Herbert Cruwys and Anna Agnes Jackson who married in Deptford, London, in 1899. We have had a most useful exchange of information and Sam has been able to fill me in on some of the later generations of her family. She has also solved the long-standing mystery of Jill Cruwys, the England cricketer, who played in the England team, captained by Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, which won the first Women’s Cricket World Cup in 1973. I'd never previously been able to fit Jill into any of my existing trees as the names of her parents were not known. Sam tells me that Jill was the youngest child of Leslie Jackson Cruwys and Margaret Elizabeth Gosling. She is the first cousin of Sam's mother. Jill Cruwys tragically died of breast cancer in 1990 at the age of 47.

The Mariansleigh Cruwys family is the most numerous of all the surviving Cruwys branches. Unfortunately it has not been possible to trace the tree further back than the late 1700s as no baptism has yet been found for the earliest known ancestor George Cruwys, a mason, who died in 1856 in Mariansleigh. George married twice. His first wife was Ann Eastmond, who died in 1841. They produced six children. George’s second wife was Mary Ann Bartlett. They married in 1842, and the marriage certificate informs us that George's father was George Cruwys, a malster. We know from the 1851 census that George junior was born in Mariansleigh. His birth date varies from source to source and he was born any time between about 1781 and 1788. Unfortunately the Mariansleigh parish registers are not very well preserved and there are gaps for this critical period. I’ve also had searches done of the Bishop's Transcripts, but again there are gaps and no record of George's baptism has been found. The best hope now is to find a living Cruwys descendant from this tree who is willing to take a DNA test.

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.