Newspaper transcriptions

I have taken advantage of an opportunity to access a free trial of the Gale Digital Collections, which includes a large collection of digitised British newspapers from the 16th to the 19th century. The digital newspaper archive is a brilliant resource but sadly access in the UK is restricted to institutes of higher education. I hope that funds will eventually be made available to make this important resource accessible to the general public, though the response from my local library was not very encouraging.

I have now downloaded a large collection of newspaper articles from the collection and am slowly updating my records. I have transcribed some of the more interesting Devon-related articles for the pages of Genuki Devon. There is an interesting story about a "supernatural piggery" which was found at Cruwys Morchard in 1789 which is now included in a selection of newspaper extracts on the Cruwys Morchard page. I have also transcribed accounts of four Cruwys Morchard ploughing matches from the 1860s. The final contribution is an account of a fire at George Cruwys's house in Witheridge.

I have saved some of the most interesting accounts for last, so watch this space if you want to find out about the Cruse who was sent to prison for five years in 1868 and the Cruwys who was executed in 1778!

Cruwys of Prince Edward Island

Stan Cruwys in Canada has sent me some lovely photographs of his family which I am delighted to be able to share. Stan is descended from William George Cruwys and Sarah Burrows, who emigrated to Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the late 1840s from the small North Devon village of Burrington. William and Sarah settled in a place called New Wiltshire which is now part of Kingston in Lot 31 seven miles west of the island's capital Charlottetown. William had a farm of some 150 acres, which was split between his three sons upon his death in 1873.

The first photograph is of William and Sarah's second son George William Cruwys, who was born on 10th June 1850 in Lot 31, Queens, PEI. George died on 28th November 1938 in Brookfield, Queens.The second photograph is of George's wife Hannah J Howard. Hannah was the daughter of Samuel Howard and Mary Anne Pye. She was born on 5th July 1867 in Lot 31, Queens, PEI. She died on 8th February 1929 in Cornwall (Lot 32), Queens. Both William and Hannah are buried in the Cornwall United Cemetery in Queens.William and Hannah had four children, three daughters, Zella Maud, Leila Bessie, and Emma Pearl, and one son Kaymond William Cruwys. The final photograph is of the wedding of Kaymond and his bride Vera Priscilla Hardy in November 1922 in Union Road (Lot 33), Queens. Vera, the daughter of Bartholomew Cromwell Hardy and May Maria Ayers, was born on 13th February 1902 in Union Road (Lot 33).Vera tragically died at the age of 32 on 11th September 1934 in Charlottetown. The following obituary, which was found in the Cruwys family file at the Prince Edward Island Archives, was published in one of the local newspapers:

In Memoriam

Mrs. Kaymond W. Crewys

On Sunday, Sept. 16th [1934], as the Church of Jesus Christ had again called his people to worship, reminding them of the Eternal Verities, and of the fact that we are creatures of two worlds, this fact was irrevocably borne in upon the people of Brookfield and vicinity, when it was learned that one of its citizens, in the person of Mrs. Kaymond Crewys, had gone to her eternal reward.

Mrs. Crewys had entered the P.E.I. hospital a few days before, but from the first little hope was held for her recovery. Although the deceased refused to abandon hope, while to her physician and relatives it was obvious that the end was fast approaching.

Her passing so early in life, at the age of 32, when she was so much needed in the home, is hard to understand. But we shall not murmur nor complain, realising as we do that our destiny is in the hands of a wise and loving Father. The deceased leaves to mourn her passing, besides her sorrowing husband, seven children: Lloyd G., Avis M., Ralph S., Hollis K, Stanley H., Gerald W., and Vera L., her mother and father, Mrs and Mrs. Bart Hardy, of Union Road, where the deceased was born, three sisters, Mrs. Fulton Moreside, North River; Mrs. Chester Ward, Charlottetown; and Mrs. Fred Henderson, Charlottetown; also one brother, Wilfred at home.

The funeral was held on Tuesday, Sept. 18th, beginning with a short service at the home, after which the remains were taken to Cornwall United Church, where the deceased formerly worshipped, being a member of the choir and for a time organist there. The Church was crowded to capacity, scores standing throughout the service in the aisles of the church. It was one of the largest funerals ever held in that community, scores of sympathisers being unable to get inside the church.

The service, which was reverent and simple, was conducted by her pastor, Rev. Thos. Palethorpe, who was assisted in church and at the grave by Rev. D. K. Ross, Rev. Henry Pierce, Rev. T. W. Wilson and Rev. George Ayers, an uncle of the deceased. The deceased was tenderly laid to rest in the family plot in the cemetery which surrounds the Church, the grave being covered with a bank of flowers, of which the deceased was very fond.

The funeral arrangements was [sic] in the capable hands of McLean's Undertaking Parlors. The pall bearers were: Wilfred McLean, Golden Dollar, Sherman MacDuff, John Wood, Borden McLeod and Robert Andrews. "Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away."

Acknowledgement
I am very grateful to Miriam Neill for all her help with the PEI research.

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.

Another exciting DNA result

We now have another exciting result from the DNA project with a Cruwys in England and a Cruwys in America matching on 36 out of 37 markers. Based on this result, the Family Tree DNA calculator indicates that both these men have an 88.06% probability of sharing a common ancestor within eight generations. This fits in perfectly with the paper trail which indicates that both men are descended from William Cruwys and Margaret Eastmond who married in 1814 in the small village of Rose Ash in North Devon. William and Margaret had eight children, two of whom died in childhood. The English tester is descended from the youngest surviving son, Thomas Cruwys, who was baptised on 19th June 1831 in Burrington, Devon. Thomas was a tailor. He moved to Bristol where he married Anne Wall in 1860. The American tester is descended from William Cruwys and Sarah Burrows who married on 21st November 1848 in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The Canadian tree is now very well documented and accounts for nearly every single person in America and Canada with the surname Cruwys. We believe that the William who emigrated to PEI is the third son of William Cruwys and Margaret Eastmond, who was baptised on 21st January 1821 in Burrington. William junior makes his last appearance in the British records in the 1841 census when, at the age of 20, he was a male servant living in Chulmleigh, Devon. His mother Margaret and brother John were living in the same village. No trace of William can be found in any of the subsequent British censuses and there is no matching death registration in the General Register Office indexes.

Canadian research is particularly difficult because the civil registration system in PEI did not commence until 1906, and there are very few surviving passenger records. William's departure from England and his arrival in Canada are therefore not documented. His earliest appearance in the Canadian records is in 1848 with his marriage to Sarah Burrows. I have a copy of the marriage certificate from the PEI Archives but, unfortunately, unlike a British marriage record from this date, the certificate does not provide the fathers' names. There are however a number of clues which link William with Burrington, the first of which is the use of the distinctive name Augustus, which is used exclusively by the Burrington Cruwys family and was the name chosen by William and Sarah for one of their sons. William died on 19th October 1873 in Kingston, Queens, PEI. His age at death was said to be 52 years, which matches perfectly with the presumed 1821 baptism in Burrington. I have transcribed his will and published it online on Genuki. The Canadian records provide no clues as to the origins of Sarah Cruwys née Burrows. The censuses merely indicate that she was of English origin. It is however surely no coincidence that a Sarah Burrows was baptised on 3rd June 1822 in Burrington. It therefore seems highly likely that William and Sarah were childhood friends and it is quite possible that they sailed to PEI together on the same ship.