Cruwys
One-Name Study

Topics

• About the Cruwys One-Name Study
• Variants
• Origin of the surname
• Historical occurrences
• Frequency of the name
• Distribution of the name
• Data
• DNA project
• Links
• Contact Details

About the Cruwys One-Name Study

The Cruwys one-name study began in 2002 when I began to trace the history of my father's family. I gradually accumulated a large quantity of information on various Cruwys families and in January 2006 the decision was taken to register the surname with the Guild in order to share my research with other researchers and to learn more about other branches of the family. The Cruwys one-name blog was set up in January 2007 to keep everyone up to date with the ongoing research.

Variants

The surname appears in early records with a variety of spellings including: Creuse, Crewce, Crewes, Crewis, Crews, Crewse, Crewys, Cruce, Crues, Cruis, Cruise, Crus, Cruse, Crusse, Cruwes, Cruys, Cruyse, Cruysse, Cruyz, Cruze, Crwes, Crwys, Crywse and Crywys. All references to the many variant spellings are collected pre-1700.

Crewes is a common variant of the surname found in Cornwall from the sixteenth century onwards and especially in Liskeard, Gerrans and Probus. The Cornish Crewes are virtually all descended from Anthony Cruwys, the son of John Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard by his second wife Mary Fraunceys. Anthony married Joanna Bealbury, the daughter of John Bealbury, a wealthy merchant. Anthony died in about 1540 in Liskeard, Cornwall. The Cornish family are already covered in considerable detail by Tom Johns in his booklet Crewes of South Cornwall and their ancestors in Liskeard, Cornwall and Cruwys Morchard, Devon and are beyond the scope of the present study, though descendants from this line are encouraged to participate in the DNA project (see below). The Gerrans OPC (online parish clerk) has a comprehensive website with transcriptions from the parish registers and some interesting historical material.

The surname Crews appears in the American states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia from the seventeenth century onwards but these families are also beyond the scope of the present study, though again their participation in the DNA project (see below) is actively encouraged. Paulette Smith provides an excellent account of the genealogy of the Crews family of Viriginia on her website.

Origin of the surname

There is an old Devon rhyme, quoted by Sir John Prince in his book The Worthies of Devon, first published in 1701, which testifies to the longevity of the Cruwys surname:

“Crocker, Cruwys, and Coplestone, When the Conqueror came, were at home.”

There is however no evidence whatsoever to support the theory of a pre-Conquest pedigree and it seems most likely that the family arrived in England in the middle of the twelfth century either from Normandy or, more probably, from Flanders. The earliest mention of the name in English records found to date is in about 1160 when Ottuel de Crues of Netherexe attested the Colne charters. The earliest document in the family records is known as the Tracy Deed which is believed to date from the beginning of the 13th century, if not earlier. Two of the witnesses to this deed are Richard de Cruwes and Alexander de Cruwes. The family gave its name to the parish of Cruwys Morchard, near Tiverton, in North Devon, where they have been Lords of the Manor for almost nine hundred years from the twelfth century to the present day. The family also at one time held the manors of Rackenford and East Anstey in Devon. The latter parish was formerly known as Anstey Cruwys.

The name Cruwys is possibly derived from the Norman word cruz meaning 'cross'. The Welsh word for cross is crwys but is a less likely origin as it is pronounced crewiss whereas the Devon surname has always been pronounced cruise. In early records the name was usually spelt Cruwes, Cruys, or Crues. The present-day spelling Cruwys is a curious hybrid of these early spellings. The Cruwys spelling was used consistently in the Cruwys Morchard parish registers from the 1680s onwards. Elsewhere in Devon the Cruwys spelling began to be used from the 1790s onwards. By the beginning of civil registration in 1837 the spelling had stabilised and Cruwys was the usual spelling throughout the country. However, the name was often mis-spelt and can be difficult to locate in official records, particularly in census indexes.

Historical occurrences

• Robertus de Crwes was a Member of Parliament for Devon in 1340 and 1344. Willielmus Crywys was an MP in 1449, representing the borough of Tavistock.
• Sir Robert Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard was knighted for his valiant service in France in the Hundred Years War. He served under Walter, Lord Mauny, probably fighting at the Battle of Crecy on 26th August 1346 and the Battle of Poitiers on 19th September 1356. He reputedly restored the family estate with the spoils of war. He died in 1362.
• Sir John Cruys held 160 acres of land in Thorncastle, County Dublin, Ireland. In 1391 he was given a grant for life to be discharged from payment of his rent 'in consideration of the great inconveniences he sustains by the premises being so near to the king's Irish rebels that they are frequently burned and destroyed, and of his good service in the wars there'.
• Sir Thomas Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses under the Earl of Devon. He survived the Battle of Towton on 29th March 1461, reputedly the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil, and received a Royal Pardon from Edward IV. His Deed of Pardon is still held in the family archives. Sir Thomas then fought in the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4th May 1471 dying just over a week later on 12th May 1471. It is not known if he died of wounds sustained in the battle or if he was one of the men who sought sanctuary in Tewkesbury Abbey and who were subsequently beheaded.
• Mary Cruwys, the eldest daughter of Richard Cruwys of Wycroft Castle, Devon, married William Churchill of Muston, Dorset, some time before 1511. They are the ancestors of the prominent Churchill family from Dorset. Their descendants include the Duke of Marlborough, Sir William Churchill and Princess Diana.
• Cornelius Cruys (1655-1727) was Vice Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy and the first commander of the Russian Baltic Fleet. He was half-Norwegian and half-Dutch. He was born as Niels Olsen (Olufsen) but changed his name when he moved to Amsterdam.
• Margaret Campbell Speke Cruwys (1894-1968) was a respected archivist and local historian, who is best known as the author of A Cruwys Morchard Notebook 1066-1874. She was the Editor of Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries for more than thirty years and served both as Secretary and President of the Devonshire Association. She was Scottish by birth, the daughter of Alexander Houghton Abercrombie, an officer in the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers, but moved to Devon in 1917 when she married Lewis George Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard House. The Cruwys family is fortunate to have a large collection of some 1,700 deeds and documents relating to the affairs of the estate dating back to c. 1200. The earliest charters from 1200 to 1552 were calendared by Dr Oliver in about 1791 but the remaining documents were left untouched until Margaret discovered the collection in 1926 'in various old carriage boxes and tin trunks, sandwiched between parts of four-poster beds, butterfly specimen boxes, globes, pictures of family picnics, eighteenth-century waistcoats, medicine chests, wig stands, peacock-feathered screens, croquet hoops and similar treasure trove in the Victorian box room'. She began the monumental task of translating, cataloguing and indexing the collection, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1950 in recognition of her work. She is remembered with great affection by the people of Cruwys Morchard.
• Flying Officer 135442 Gerald Herbert Cruwys (1921-1944) was a navigator in the Royal Air Force in World War II. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Bronze Palme by General de Gaulle and the Free French government for his work with the French Resistance during his time with 161 Squadron at RAF Tempsford. He transferred to Bomber Command (Pathfinder Force 8) in October 1943 joining 97 Squadron at RAF Bourn. He survived Black Thursday (16/17 December 1943) and completed a further 11 operations with 97 Squadron before moving to 235 Squadron at Downham Market in March 1944. He died on 20th April 1944 on an operation to bomb rail installations in Belgium when his Lancaster was shot down by a German nightfighter.
• Jill Cruwys (1943-1990) played cricket for England.

Frequency of the name

There were 497 people with the surname Cruwys whose births were registered in England and Wales between 1837 and 2004. In the same period there were 384 marriages and 434 deaths. The name is often spelt incorrectly in the GRO indexes. I have records of an additional 28 births, 24 marriages and 25 deaths with variant spellings such as Crewys, Creuwys, Cruyes, Crunys, Crute, Cruyws, Crvwys, Crys, Crwys, Crwes, Cruyse, Cruys, Cruwyd and Creuse though the extraction of mis-spellings is by no means complete. Cruys is possibly a surname in its own right but the remaining variants are virtually all mistranscriptions. There was just one Cruwys marriage in Scotland.

At the time of the 2002 UK electoral register there were 126 people with the surname Cruwys living in the British Isles in the following counties and countries: Avon and Bristol, Devon, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Middlesex, Norfolk, Somerset, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The second largest concentration of the surname is in Australia, where the name is mostly to be found in New South Wales. There were 54 Cruwys marriages in New South Wales between 1788 and 1955, 26 births between 1788 and 1905 and 63 deaths between 1788 and 1975. There are 36 people with the surname Cruwys listed in the current Australian telephone directory. The surname is also found in America, Canada and Ireland with a few occurrences in France and Belgium.

The censuses are not a reliable indicator of the frequency of the surname as the name is commonly mis-transcribed and is therefore under-represented. For instance, there are a number of Crumps who are Cruwyses in disguise and the transcribers have invented a variety of weird and wonderful surnames such as Brewys, Cenings, Coneys, Cravys, Creewys, Cremeys, Crinorp, Crmoys, Crowys, Crucoys, Cruings, Cruloys, Crumys, Crungs, Crusoys, Cruroys, Crurvys, Crwoys, Cumys, Gruwys and Ommps. An initial attempt at analysing the distribution of the surname in the 1881 census can be found here.

Distribution of the name

The surname Cruwys (and variants) was firmly planted in North Devon in the twelfth century. It seems likely that everyone with the surname shares a common ancestry. A branch of the family appears to have settled in Ireland, probably at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169. Sir Hugh de Cruys was knighted on 6th February 1279 for his good service in the Irish wars and given certain demesnes in Ireland. Robert de Cruys of Nalle, County Meath, who died in 1292, held tenements at Nalle, Ardmays, Cruys, and Moderath. The arms of the Irish Cruys family share many features in common with those of the Devon family. Another branch had settled in Fotheringay, Northamptonshire, by the sixteenth century. From Devon the surname spread mainly into Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, London and Wales. The largest migration from Devon occurred from the 1840s onwards with families settling principally in Bristol, London and Wales. William George Cruwys (1821-1873) from Burrington in Devon emigrated to Prince Edward Island, Canada, and married Sarah Burrows in 1848. Some of their descendants settled in Massachusetts, USA. Virtually everyone in America and Canada with the surname Cruwys is descended from this one couple. The surname also spread to Australia in the nineteenth century. Nearly all the Cruwyses in Australia appear to be descended from John Cruwys and Elizabeth Prichard who married in 1817 at Westminster, London. Oddly in Australia some of the descendants of this couple pronounce the surname crewiss whereas others use the more usual Devon pronunciation cruise. There are three Cruwyses listed in the current New Zealand White Pages telephone directory. Cruys is possibly a distinct surname in the Netherlands where it appears the sixteenth century onwards. For further information on the name in Holland see the posting on the surname Cruys in the Netherlands.

Data

All enquiries are welcome and any information, however trivial, is always gratefully received and acknowledged. The following are some of the resources which are available:

• A listing of all the occurrences of the surname Cruwys, together with some variant spellings, from the General Register Office indexes for births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales from 1837 to 2004 inclusive. Please note that for privacy reasons information about living people will not be divulged.
• A listing of all the occurrences of the surname Cruse from the General Register Office indexes for births from 1837-1900, marriages from 1837-1940 and deaths from 1837-1930. This database has kindly been provided by David Cruse.
• A large collection of census entries from all the British censuses from 1841 to 1901, the Canadian censuses from 1881 to 1911, and the American censuses from 1880 to 1930.
• Transcriptions of all occurrences of the surname and those of many other associated names from the parish registers of Ashreigney, Burrington, Cruwys Morchard, Mariansleigh and Winkleigh in Devon. Selected transcriptions from many other parishes in Devon. A large collection of parish register transcriptions for the names Cruse, Cruce, Cuss, Curse, etc. from Berkshire.
• A complete listing of all the marriages in Devon for Cruwys, Crewes, Cruse (and other variants) from the Devon Family History Society's marriage indexes for the period 1754 to 1837.
• Baptisms and burials for Cruwys and variants for the period 1813-1837 from the Devon Family History Society's indexes. (The indexing is not yet complete but the coverage is now quite comprehensive.)
• A list of all the Cruwys, Cruse, Crews, etc. marriages from Boyd's Marriage Index 1538-1840.
• A large collection of newspaper articles including all mentions of the surname in The Times Digital Archive (1785-1985), the London Gazette (1900-1979) and the New York Times (1851-1980).
• A collection of transcriptions and photocopies from The Public Archives and Records Office in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada (courtesy of Miriam Neill).
• Copies of all the Inquisitions Post Mortem relating to the Cruwys family in Devon together with those of other associated families such as Whiting/Whyting and Keynes.
• All occurrences of the surname and some other associated names have been extracted from the following early records: the Calendars of the Patent Rolls 1216-1452, the Feudal Aids 1284-1431, the Devon Lay Subsidy Roll for 1332, the Devon Lay Subsidy Rolls for 1524-1527 and 1543-1545, the Devon Muster Roll for 1569, the Devon Protestation Returns of 1641, and the Devon Hearth Tax Return for Lady Day 1674.
• The family archives dating back to c. 1200 are still held at Cruwys Morchard House and are not available for public inspection. However, Margaret Cruwys deposited a 171-page booklet (deposit no. 1285) at the Devon Record Office in 1964 which contains abstracts of all the deeds and documents in the collection. She gives lengthy extracts from some of the documents and has provided full transcriptions of some of the Manor Court Rolls. I have a copy of the booklet on microfiche and I am currently in the process of transcribing all the entries.

In addition to the material I have acquired for my Cruwys one-name study I also have a substantial amount of data on some of the other family names which I am researching. These names include: Bodger (Bourn, Cambridgeshire); Boundy (Ashreigney, Devon), Couch (St Giles in the Wood, Devon), Ford (Ashreigney, Devon, and Prince Edward Island, Canada); Dillon (Burrington and Ashreigney, Devon); Faithfull/Faithful (Berkshire, Hampshire, Australia and New Zealand); Kennett (Sussex and Dorset); Tidbury (Berkshire and Hampshire); Trask (Merriott, Somerset, and London); Underwood (Boxworth, Cambridgeshire); Westcott (North Molton, Devon); Wiggins (Clapham, Lewisham and Sydenham); Woolfenden/Wolfenden (Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire).

DNA project

The Cruwys/Cruse/Crewes DNA project was set up on 26th September 2007 and is actively recruiting new members. The DNA project has a wider scope than the one-name study. Participation is invited from any male bearers of the surnames Crewes, Crews, Cruise, Cruse, Cruwys and Cruys. For further details visit the official project website.

Links

Cruwys news

The Cruse Rootsweb mailing list

There is a Cruwys Genealogy Group on Facebook. A Facebook account is required to access the pages.

Cruwys Family Genealogy Forum

The Cruse message board

Pictures of Cruwys Morchard from Geograph

A growing collection of wills, newspaper articles and other items has been transcribed and published online, mostly on the pages of Genuki Devon. The largest collection can be found on the Cruwys Morchard page.

Other published items (listed in chronological order) include:

• The will of John Ackelande Esquire of Landkey (1538) (John Acland's second wife was Mary Cruwys nee Fraunceys)
• The will of Gilbert Crewes of Gerrans, Cornwall (1614)
• The will of Susann Cruse of Winkleigh (1648)
• The will of Francis Colman, gentleman of Tiverton (1650) (Francis Colman was the husband of Bridget Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard)
• The will of Mary Cruse, wife of Winkleigh (1655)
• The will of Henry Cruwys of Hillersdon, Cullompton (1760)
• The will of Jane Cruwys Widow of Hillersdon, Cullompton (1765)
• Transcription of a tripartite indenture dated 12th October 1770 between John Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard, Thomas Putt and Samuel Newte of the first part, Charles Evelyn of Totnes and Philippa his wife of the second part and William Mann yeoman of Broadhempston of the third part
• The will of Dorothy Dillon, widow, of Burrington (1812) (Dorothy Dillon's eldest daughter, who was also called Dorothy, married John Cruwys on 6th June 1779 in Ashreigney, Devon)
• John Cruwys and the stolen cow (1848)
• William Cruwys and Maria Westacott and the stolen blankets (1871)
• The last will and testament of William Cruwys of Prince Edward Island, Canada (1873)
• The tragic death of Herbert Cruwys of Witheridge (1891)

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Mrs Debbie Kennett
E-mail:

This page last updated 8 March 2008.

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Profiles of other one-name studies registered with the Guild may be found here.
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