Cruse/Scruse of Wiltshire

I have been in contact with Carol Patis via the Wiltshire Rootsweb mailing list and Carol has kindly sent me details of her Cruse/Scruse tree from Wiltshire. Carol is descended from Thomas Scruse who was born on 2nd February 1799 and baptised on 10th February 1799 in Maddington, Wiltshire. Thomas was the eldest son of Oliver Cruse and Ann Feltham who married on 19th March 1798 in Maddington. Although Oliver's name was spelt Cruse in the marriage register, the spelling changed to Scruse when Thomas was baptised which is perhaps not surprising as the surname would have been spelt as it sounded and the final S in Thomas could easily have blended with the surname Cruse to form the name Scruse. The Scruse spelling was used consistently by Thomas's descendants and also by the descendants of his brother Joseph Scruse who was born on 11th August 1802 and baptised on 29th August 1802 in Orcheston St George, Wiltshire. The Wiltshire Scruses seem to account for a large majority of the Scruses who appear in the civil registration indexes from 1837 onwards, and some of this family have also settled in Australia.

Ann Feltham was probably Oliver's second wife. An Oliver Cruse married Sarah Topp on 18th April 1792 in Fishton Delamere, Wiltshire. They had three children: Thomas (baptised 3rd February 1793 in Orcheston St George), Hannah (baptised 9th November 1794 in Orcheston St George) and Elizabeth (probably born in 1796 in Orcheston St George). Sarah and the three children died on 13th January 1799 in Orcheston St George. The sad story of their deaths is recorded in the following poignant entry in the parish register:

Thomas, Hannah and Elizabeth Cruse, son and daughters of Oliver and Sarah Cruse who were burnt to death by their mother in a fit of insanity Jan 13th and buried Jan 15th. Sarah the wife of Oliver Cruse and mother of the above three children died in consequence of a wound she gave herself on Jan 13th and was buried 24th.

It has not yet been possible to determine the ancestry of Oliver Cruse with confidence. An Oliver Cruse was baptised on 30th November 1747 in Netheravon, Wiltshire, the son of Robert Cruse and Hannah Silverthorne. This Oliver married Joyce Peircey on 12th May 1770 in Orcheston St George. No record has been found of any children from this marriage. Joyce died in 1791. Did this Oliver Cruse then go on to marry Sarah Topp in 1792? By this time Oliver would have been around 44 or 45 years old. I only have details of Oliver's three marriages from various indexes and there is no indication that he was a widower, though this information was not always provided in the early registers. If the three Olivers are indeed all one and the same person then we can trace the line back a further two generations to Robert Cruse and Sue Hill who married on 9th October 1665 in Urchfont, Wiltshire.

As an interesting aside on the surname Scruse I have discovered that Scruse is the maiden name of Katherine Jackson, the mother of the singer Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson's grandfather, Prince Albert Scruse, was apparently born on 16th October 1907, and his Scruse family appear to be from Alabama. There seems to be very little information on this line and it would be interesting to do further research to see if there is any connection with the Wiltshire Cruses/Scruses, perhaps through a family of slave owners.

My mtDNA results

I've now received my mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test results from Family Tree DNA. Somewhat surprisingly my maternal line belongs to haplogroup U4, a small Indo-European haplogroup which seems to be quite rare. The haplogroup is found in only 1.63% of the population of England and Wales. The highest frequencies of U4 are found in southern Siberia, and it is also found in Eastern Europe, the Urals, in some German-speaking populations and in a few lineages in India.

Brian Sykes gives names to the seven main European mitochondrial haplogroups in his book The Seven Daughters of Eve. All the women in Europe can supposedly trace their genetic ancestry back to one of these seven women. Haplogroup U4 is not one of Sykes's original clan mothers but is a sub-clade or sub-branch of haplogroup U, otherwise known as Ursula. "Ursula" lived around 45,000 years ago. "Ulrike" is of more recent origin and lived around 18,000 years ago. Sykes describes Ulrike thus: thus:

The clan of Ulrike (German for Mistress of All) is not among the original "Seven Daughters of Eve" clans, but with just under 2% of Europeans among its members, it has a claim to being included among the numerically important clans. Ulrike lived about 18,000 years ago in the cold refuges of the Ukraine at the northern limits of human habitation. Though Ulrike's descendants are nowhere common, the clan is found today mainly in the east and north of Europe with particularly high concentrations in Scandinavia and the Baltic states.

I have so far been able to trace my direct maternal line back to Mary Ann Butler, the daughter of James Butler, a labourer. Mary Ann was born in Purton, Wiltshire, in around 1815. She married Moses Ball in 1842 in Walcot, Somerset. Moses and Mary Ann had six children who were born in Sherston, Wiltshire, and Westonbirt, Gloucestershire. My maternal line continues with their daughter Hannah Ball, who moved to London and married William Saunders, a coachman and stage coach driver, on 16th June 1872 at the Parish Church of St Marks in North Audley Street. The other names in the later generations of my maternal line are Tidbury, Rattey and of course Cruwys.

Mutations occur much less frequently in mitochondrial DNA and the tests are therefore not so useful as the Y-DNA test which we are using for the Cruwys DNA Project. Most people who take the mtDNA test have large numbers of matches in the various databases. Not surprisingly, with my rare U4 haplotype, I do not have a single match in the Family Tree DNA database. I have also uploaded my results to Mitosearch, the public mtDNA database sponsored by Family Tree DNA, but again I do not have any matches. It is also possible to search the Mitosearch database by haplogroup. There are only 472 people in the whole world with my haplogroup in the database at present.

I regard the mtDNA test as an investment for the future. My grandmother was an only child and my great-grandmother was the only daughter in her family. My sister and I have both had sons so our direct maternal line is now at an end. Sons do of course inherit mtDNA from their mother but they cannot pass it on to the next generation. My mtDNA results will have more value as more people in the UK get tested and once I start to make further progress with my research into my maternal line in Wiltshire. With a rare haplogroup it should also be much easier to verify my maternal line.

Cruses of Westbourne, Sussex

I have received two marriages from Guild members Lynda and Roger Goacher as a result of the recent Westbourne Marriage Challenge which they undertook at the West Sussex Record Office. I now have the full certificate details for the following two marriages:

- Henrietta CRUSE and William FAY who married in December 1895 in Westbourne, Sussex

- Frances Mary CRUSE and Henry James DAVIS who married in August 1900 in Westbourne, Sussex.

Henrietta and Frances are the daughters of George Cruse, a potter.

I have not yet worked on the Sussex Cruses. I suspect they belong to the line which originates in Chailey, Sussex. If anyone is interested in this family please get in touch.

Cruwys of Bristol

Last Saturday I had an enjoyable day out at the "Who do you think you are" show at Olympia in London. I came home with a number of new resources which I am only just starting to explore. One of my purchases was a CD from the Bristol and Avon Family History Society containing transcriptions of all the baptisms in the Bristol Diocese from 1813 to 1837. I was hoping to find the baptism of my great-great-grandmother Anne Cruwys née Wall. She emigrated to America in around 1901 when she was about 65 or 66 to join her son William and daughter Emily, both of whom never married. She spent the rest of her life in America living with William and Emily and died in Richmond Hill, Queens County, New York, in 1915 at the age of 79. I have her death certificate from America and her date of birth is given as 2nd October 1835. I know from the censuses that she was born in Bristol and in some of the censuses her place of birth is given as St Paul's, Bristol. Unfortunately there is no likely baptism on the CD so I can only conclude either that she was not born in Bristol after all or that she was baptised in one of the non-conformist churches. I know from her marriage certificate that her father was James Wall, a labourer, but I have also been unable to find any conclusive matches for Anne in the 1841 or 1851 censuses.

However, as always seems to be the case with family history research, sometimes new information arrives when you are least expecting it which allows pieces of another part of the jigsaw to fall into place. I found some baptisms on the CD which have now enabled me to add another branch to the Wiveliscombe/Oakford Cruwys tree. This branch begins with John Cruwys and Mary Weeks who married in 1834 at St Mary Le Port, Bristol. John was the son of Isaac Cruwys and Ann Burton. He was baptised on 29th July 1810 in Chipstable, Somerset. Like many other Cruwyses, he was a tailor. John Cruwys and Mary Weeks had two children: Selina and Alfred. Selina died at the age of 32, but Alfred married and had a family. Alfred died in a tragic accident and a report of the inquest was published in the Bristol Mercury on 24th and 28th July 1894:

Inquests in Bristol
Yesterday afternoon Mr. H. G. Dogget, the city Coroner, held the following inquests in Bristol,

Strange death of a shipwright
At the Redland police station, on the body of Alfred Cruwys, aged about 54 years, who was found dead in the Floating Harbour, on Friday, 20th. William Cruwys, of 11. Gloucester street, St. Philip's, identified the body as that of his father, a shipwright, who lived at 2, Brook cottages, Southville. Witness last saw him alive about a fortnight ago. During the last few months he had been subject to giddiness, and a short time back he had a bad cold. William Tanner stated that he knew deceased, who was working with him on the barque Liberty, alongside the New Quay, Hotwell road. On Friday morning deceased was engaged on a particular job, and witness was fastening a rail down. After breakfast they both started work, and witness noticed his companion picking his tools up, as if to leave the ship. Witness than lost sight of him. Subsequently the tools were found lying together on the deck. Thomas Bawn stated that on Friday, the 20th inst., he was engaged in ballasting the barque Liberty. He did not see Cruwys at work that day, as he was busy in other parts of the ship. At about midday a man named Tanner told witness that deceased was missing. On witness's return from dinner he found that the man was still missing, and so he got his creeps and began to drag for him, In about eight minutes he discovered his body on the port side of the bow of the ship. The vessel was lying broad side on the quay. He was in his working dress, and there were no marks of violence on the body. A verdict was returned to the effect, "That the deceased was found dead in the Floating Harbour, having probably fallen in accidentally and been drowned."