Cruse of Yateley

Anahita Hoose has kindly sent me details of her Cruse ancestors from Yateley in Hampshire. Anahita’s line can be traced back to Jonathan Cruse and Sarah Paice who married on 28th December 1787 in Yateley. Rather unusually Jonathan was described in the marriage register as a 'pauper'. Jonathan and Sarah had three children, two of whom were born prior to their marriage and who retained the Paice surname:

1) Elizabeth Paice was born c.1784 and was baptised on 27th February 1786 in Yateley. She is probably the Elizabeth Paice, aged twenty-seven, who was buried on 10th September 1811 in Yateley.

2) William Paice was born on 22nd September 1786 and baptised on 4th October 1786 in Yateley. He married a Sarah, but no marriage has so far been located. William and Sarah had five children. William’s death was registered in the Farnborough registration district in the March quarter of 1865.

3) Sarah Cruse was born on 13th April 1788 and christened on 13th July 1788 in Yateley. She married James Watts on 15th October 1804 in Yateley and was buried on 9th August 1812, aged twenty-four, in Yateley.

Sarah Cruse née Paice was buried on 14th November 1788 in Yateley, just nine months after the birth of her youngest child Sarah. She was just twenty-nine years old. The parish register records that she died of consumption.

Jonathon subsequently had a relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, which produced another child:

4) Charlotte Taylor was born on 24th March 1793 and baptised on 31 March in Yateley. No record has so far been found of a marriage or burial.

Elizabeth Taylor is probably the one who was buried on 2nd August 1807, aged forty-four, in Yateley.

Jonathon himself was buried on 22nd May 1803 in Yateley, aged seventy-one, his place of residence being given as Sandhurst, Berkshire. His burial record places his year of birth at around 1732. If the age given at burial is correct Jonathan would have been about fifty-five years old when he married Sarah Paice. It seems likely therefore that this was a second marriage. No baptism has yet been located for Jonathan. Jonathan is however a name which appears in the Ogbourne St George tree from Wiltshire. The Ogbourne St George line spread across the county border into Berkshire, and I suspect that Anahita’s Cruses might well be related. To test this hypothesis we would need to find a direct male-line descendant of William and Sarah Paice, who would be expected to have the same Y chromosome as Jonathan Cruse. Anahita is herself descended from William and Sarah Paice but is not aware any Paice cousins. It is of course always possible that this particular male line has now become extinct.

If anyone is researching this tree do get in touch. We would be particularly interested in knowing what happened to baby Charlotte Taylor.

© Debbie Kennett 2010

Rye marriage certificate

I've received a faux marriage certificate in the post from Guild member Roger Goacher who recently undertook a Marriage Challenge for the Rye Registration District in Sussex. The certificate is for the marriage Eleanor Crews and Samuel Eldridge which took place in June 1856 in Northiam, Sussex. Samuel was a widower at the time of the marriage. He was a labourer, and is the son of Samuel Eldridge, a bricklayer. Eleanor is the daughter of George Crews, a labourer. I have no further information on this line as yet but if anyone is researching this family do get in touch and I'd be happy to send a copy of the certificate.

© Debbie Kennett 2010

Surname frequencies in the 1990 and 2000 US censuses

A posting on Dick Eastman's blog has alerted me to some interesting surname data which can be found on the US census bureau website. The bureau provides lists of the most frequently occurring surnames in the 1990 and 2000 US censuses. A surname must be included at least 100 times to be appear in the list and consequently CRUWYS is not shown. I did however find listings for most of the other variant spellings. I've provided details below of the rankings. The final column for the year 2000 is a count of the occurrences of each surname in the 2000 census.

1990          Ranking   Count
CREWS        1373

CRUSE         3975

CRUISE        7221

CREW          8148

CRUCE        9146

CRUZE       21658

SCREWS    21905

CRUICE     57820

CREWE      73936

2000
CREWS       1404       23167

CRUSE        3874         8422

CREW         7871         3900

CRUISE      9754         3058

CRUCE     14457         1893

CRUZE      20468        1205

SCREWS   24243         969

CREWE     38706         537

CRUS        41060         501

CRUCES   45829         439

CREWSE  49767          396

For the year 2000 information is also provided on ethnic breakdown. As I cannot format tables properly on the blog I've uploaded the data to Google Docs. You can see the file here.

It should be noted that the surname data from the two censuses is not directly comparable. For the 1990 data a sample was taken from 6.3 million census entries, equating to approximately one fortieth of the US population. The report for 2000 uses "name responses from almost 270 million people with valid name information".

I do not include all of these variants spellings in my one-name study because the high frequency of some of these surnames, especially in the US, would make the task unmanageable. A further problem is that some surnames have developed in different ways on both sides of the Atlantic. We have some evidence for instance that in Virginia the surname Crew evolved into Crews. In the UK Crew and Crewe do not appear to be related to any of the Cruse and variant spellings. The situation is also complicated by the different ethnic composition of the American population. In the US Cruze and Crus seem to be variants of the Spanish surname Cruz. In the UK these names are rarely seen and usually appear as variant spellings in parish register entries. There is a still a long way to go before we understand the full picture of our complicated family of surnames, but the DNA project is already proving to be a very useful way of working out which spellings are related and we will learn more as more people with the many variants join the project.

© Debbie Kennett 2010

Memories of Cruse's Stores, Rottingdean

I wrote back in December 2008 about Cruse's stores in Rottingdean, Sussex with a follow-up post a few days later. I have now been contacted by Terry who worked for a short time at Cruse's stores back in 1970. Terry has kindly sent me a scan of his 1970 payslip, which was handwritten by Ron Cruse, together with a scan of the shop's headed paper which I've reproduced below.

The blackouts refer to the power cuts in the 1970s when the power unions went on strike and the population had to resort to candlelight and oil lamps on strike days.

Terry has kindly shared his memories of Cruse's stores with me and given me permission to publish them here.

The Stores were a high class grocers.
Ron Cruse worked very hard.
As did his son Alan.

They did home deliveries, as part of the business.
Mr Cruse took the orders by phone.
A list was made by hand.
He then gave the staff the list and the order was made up.

There was a bacon and cheese counter, usually run by a Mr Oliver.
He sliced bacon and cut cheese.
They cured their own hams.
There were "loose" nuts, prunes, huge bags of brown sugar.
They arrived loose and we weighed them out into 1lb bags.
Whole, very large, cheddar cheeses would arrive in wooden "hat boxes".
The cheese was also covered in muslin.
It was my job to unpack these and cut the cheese with a cheese wire.

My job was sort of storeman.
I packed away deliveries.
We had a lock-up garage up the road for extra storage.

I helped pack the van for our deliveries.
Bob was the delivery driver.
The store had another two stories upstairs where we stored provisions.
There was a back room for tinned goods.

They sold a wide range of items.
Rottingdean being a fairly posh village near Brighton, situated on the coast.
Quite a few retired people.
The store provided an excellent service.

We opened Saturday mornings, so it was a five and half day week.
I started at 8 am and finished about 6 pm.
Then there was an hour's travel each way, as I lived in Brighton.

I guess these days it would be hard to find a shop like Cruses Stores.
Its amazing how quickly things change.
It's deemed history now!

I enjoyed my seven months there.
It was a real family business.
I had to move away from Brighton but returned.
When I applied for a job I had to give Cruse's Stores as a reference.
They gave me a great reference, then Mr Cruse wrote to me offering me a job!
But I turned it down, having started a career in the National Health Service.

Thank you Terry for sharing these memories with us. It certainly would be hard to find such a shop today!