Cruwys of Shrewsbury

Sharon Hindmarsh in Australia has been in touch and sent me some interesting information about a Cruwys family from Shrewsbury in Shropshire. Sharon's mother-in-law is descended from John Cruwys and Elizabeth Prichard who married on 10th February 1817 at St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, London. John and Elizabeth's daughter-in-law, Sarah Ann Cruwys née Harris, emigrated to Australia in 1879 with her five sons Colin, John, Ralph, Ernest and Arthur. Sarah's daughter, Selina, had emigrated to Australia the previous year with her new husband John Parkes, his parents and his brothers and sisters. Nearly all the Cruwyses in Australia are descended from John Cruwys and Elizabeth Prichard. Interestingly Sharon tells me that her mother-in-law's family have always pronounced the surname Kruse, whereas elsewhere in Australia it is pronounced Crewiss. Judith Bowen is the expert on the Cruwyses of Australia and she has over the course of the last 30 years recorded nearly all the Australian descendants. However, the birth and death of the John Cruwys at the head of the Australian tree remain as elusive as ever.

Sharon has only recently made contact with Judith and wasn't aware of all the research which had already been done on the Australian family. In the quest for the elusive John Cruwys she purchased a number of certificates for a family from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, before she realised that the timeline did not work out. She has now very kindly sent me copies of all these certificates which have all proved very useful.

I have not so far heard from anyone who is researching the Shrewsbury Cruwys family so I will publish some details below in the hope that other researchers will be able to get in touch and provide further information.

The Shrewsbury tree begins with Thomas Cruwys, a tailor, who was born about 1768. In the 1841 census he is living in the Parish of St Mary's in Shrewsbury with his wife Hannah and their children Richard, 25, a gardener, Harriet, 15, a female servant, and Robert, 15, a tailor's apprentice. Thomas stated in the 1841 census that he was not born in Shropshire. Unfortunately he died in 1848 and we therefore have no further clues as to his place of birth. I have not been able to find any record of Thomas and Hannah's marriage but we now know that they had the following children:

1. John Cruwys, born about 1804 in Shrewsbury. John moved to London where he appears to have worked first as a tailor before becoming the innkeeper at the Bell Inn in Kilburn. John seems to have married three times. He married Margaret Taylor in 1829, Mary Ann Farnsworth in 1836 and Eliza Plumridge née Brown in 1843. All the marriages took place at St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square.

2. Elizabeth Cruwys was born about 1815 in Shrewsbury. In 1851 she was living at the Bell Inn with her brother John and working as a barmaid.

3. Richard Cruwys was born about 1815 in Shrewsbury. He worked variously as a gardener, seedsman and police constable. He married Margaret Sanderson in 1851 at St Martin in the Fields.

4. Ann Cruwys, was born about 1816, probably in Shrewsbury. She married Alfred Lloyd, a painter, in 1838 at St Martin in the Fields.

5. Harriet Cruwys was born about 1823 in Shropshire. She married James Walsh, a leather breeches maker, in 1843 at St Martin in the Fields. By 1851 they were living in Westminster St James and had three children.

6. Robert Cruwys was born about 1824 in Shrewsbury. He was a tailor. He married Eliza Tomson in 1851 at St Martin in the Fields.

Intriguingly we know that Thomas Cruwys was sent to Gaol in 1811. The full details are not yet known but "Thomas Cruwys, late of Shrewsbury, in the county of Salop, Tailor" was included in a list of "Prisoners in the Gaol at Shrewsbury in and for the County of Salop" which was published in the London Gazette on three separate dates in July 1811. Thomas's absence in prison might well account for the gap between the births of John in 1805 and Elizabeth in 1815.

I've had great difficulty tracking Thomas and Hannah's children beyond the 1851 census and would be very interested to hear from anyone who is related to any of these families.

Peter Cruwys the unsung hero of sport

My father, Peter Cruwys, was both surprised and delighted to receive a nomination in the BBC Midlands Sports Personality of the Year Awards for 2007. He is one of five nominees in the category "Unsung heroes of sport". Details of the awards can be found on the BBC Midlands website. The video in support of the nomination can be seen here. The awards are being presented this evening at a special presentation dinner. He seems to be up against some stiff competition and is not expecting to win, but will no doubt enjoy the evening and the nomination is a reward in itself for all his hard work. There was also a brief story published in the Gloucestershire Echo about the award which can be read here.

DNA update

The DNA project is now well under way, and I have been gratified by the number of people who have shown an interest and who have agreed to be tested. We now have nine testers, four from England, two from Australia and three from America. One representative from each of the following lines is now participating in the project:

Crewes of Gerrans, Cornwall, England

Crews of Georgia, USA

Cruse of Berkshire, England
Cruse of Rode, Somerset, England
Cruse of South Africa (of English origin)

Cruse of Clark County, Kentucky, USA
Cruse of Virginia/Kentucky, USA

Cruwys of Winkleigh, England
Cruwys of Wiveliscombe, England

Thus we now have a reasonable cross-section of testers representing some of the key families. The tests from the Gerrans and Winkleigh descendants are particularly important as these two families both have strong documentary evidence to prove a descent from the Cruwys Morchard family. The common ancestor for these two lines is John Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard (born c. 1449), who inherited the Cruwys Morchard estate after his father, Thomas, died at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The Winkleigh family are descended from John Cruwys, the eldest son from John senior's first marriage to Elizabeth Whitley. The Cornish Crewes, who settled in Gerrans and Liskeard, are descended from Anthony Crewes, one of four sons born to John senior's second wife Mary Fraunceys. There was of course no standardised spelling of surnames at this time. The Crewes spelling was later adopted by the Cornish family while the Cruwys spelling was used by the Devon family. It is of course not possible to test a representative of the current Cruwys family at Cruwys Morchard as they are all descended from a female line through George Sharland (1802-1874), the eldest son of Harriet Cruwys (1771-1847) and George Sharland (1758-1831). George Sharland junior was given the right to use the additional surname Cruwys by Royal Licence in 1831 and was at the same time permitted to bear the Cruwys arms.

So far we have received two sets of results, both of which are from our American testers. The two testers (a Crews and a Cruse) had a perfect 12/12 match at 12 markers proving that they both share a common ancestor. The results can be seen on the project website. Interestingly, too, the first two testers both belong to haplogroup I1a. A haplogroup is an indication of your deep ancestry, the family tree from many thousands of years ago from which you originate. Haplogroup I1a is one of the rarer haplogroups and is an indication of Viking ancestry, although the haplogroup is also found in Northern Europe, particularly in north Germany, Denmark, the British Isles and the old Norman regions of France. Further information about the I1a haplogroup can be found on this Wikipedia page.

It is far too early yet to draw any firm conclusions but it will be very interesting indeed if all the Crews and Cruses in America do indeed descend from the same person. Unfortunately they will have to wait a little longer to find out if their results match with those of any of our other testers in England and Australia. The postal strike in England caused delays with the receipt and despatch of some of the kits, and most of the results are now not expected until the New Year. All the remaining tests except for one have been done at 37-markers. It takes longer for these results to come through but they are much more accurate.

We are all looking forward to the results with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I'm hoping that we might finally have a few answers but I have no doubt that there will also be a few surprises and unexpected discoveries in store.

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.