As most of the world learned, or was reminded, in the year 2007, May
13th was the 400th anniversary of the beginning of English settlement in
America, and that history of English settlement began 400 years ago in Jamestown,
Virginia. For those of you who wonder whether the Crouch family was at
Jamestown, the answer is yes. What is known about those early-American
members of the Crouch family at the Jamestown settlement and its outlying
suburbs in the 1600s is set forth below. If any of you have additional
information, please contact us about it at the address shown.
Of those Crouches who first came to Virginia, no one knows for certain
when or how they first came, but there were several of them recorded in
Virginia's first census in the year 1623.
The census was taken because after the great Indian massacre of the colonists
around Jamestown in 1622, it was necessary to get an inventory of how many
colonists were left. It showed a Richard and two Thomases living at or close
to Jamestown. Before long, the Crouch family was equally numerous on the
south side of the James River, and the creek which enters the James River
at Scotland Wharf, where the Jamestown ferry now docks, is still known today
as Crouch's Creek.
Of these early Virginians of the Crouch family, the only one who left any
record of where he came from in England was Lieutenant Richard Crouch, living
at James City on 16 February 1623 at "The Maine" and in Norfolk
County in 1624, who said he came from "Howton" (Houghton), Bedfordshire.
The Houghton in Bedfordshire today is Houghton Conquest, about four miles
south of Bedford Town, next to Houghton House. Its local history is very
well documented, with parish registers intact back to the 1500s and available
at five pounds from the Bedfordshire Family History Society. Houghton Regis
is just over the border, in another shire, about eight miles south
of Houghton Conquest, west of Luton and north of Dunstable. (Another
interesting note as to this one English immigrant who gave his town of origin
is that he took the Oath of Supremacy at James City before the General Court
in the year 1624 and (the record being ambiguous) may have been 27 years
old and a carpenter (19 V 133 & 134).) (This term at that time meant
the builder, or general contractor, who employed the other tradesmen.) Later
on, in the 18th Century, the family were fairly prominent in the Houghton
area, between Hitchin and Luton, Hertfordshire, just west of Stevenage,
and once owned the Manor of St. Ippolits there, as well as Alswick Hall,
elsewhere in Hertfordshire. However, these prominent members of the family
made their mark on English life long after our ancestors had become Americans.
(Though the records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury show that there
were Crouches listed as "Gentlemen" living in St. Ippolit's at
least as early as 1679, when Samuel Crouch had his will probated and was
so listed.) As far as the author can say, we have no clear and certain idea
where the Crouch family members from whom the line of descent for our family
(the Virginia-Tennessee-points-west family) can be traced came from in England.
Today the Crouch family in England is known predominantly as a Sussex family,
and the name appears a lot in Kent, and Middlesex and in the city of London.
An inventory of the wills filed by Crouch family members during the late
17th Century shows a number of them in Hertfordshire, with some in London,
Middlesex, Sussex, Berkshire, Surrey, and as far away as Dorset. In the
18th Century list of wills and estates in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury
there are a number of them listed for Middlesex, Devon, Kent, Buckingham,
Hertfordshire, Cambridge, and London, with one in Northampton, but there
are quite a few who are listed as living in the "parts beyond the seas,"
meaning the American colonies. Arms were several times granted to the squires
and gentlemen among them, and the simplicity and consistency of the various
granted designs indicates long standing and ancient origin. The London Visitation
of Arms for 1633-1635 noted that among the Crouch families with the right
to this coat of arms were several families in Virginia (18 Tyler's Q. 244).
We will not pursue the English origins of the family any farther, but will
follow their lives from the shores of Virginia.
APPENDIX A
THE EARLIEST CROUCH FAMILY MEMBERS IN VIRGINIA
Also before we leave the subject of the shadowy Virginia settlers of
the 17th Century who probably include out ancestors, but out of whom our
ancestors cannot be selected and identified, we should consider what it
meant for English men, women and children, of any station in life, to board
a ship for an unknown land on the other side of the world. This land was
known only as a howling wilderness, populated by savages, where almost none
of the comforts of English town or village life were available. That sea
journey of thousands of miles was mysterious and certainly frightening.
Though no spot in England is farther than 50 miles from the sea, most of
these people had probably never seen a ship before, because few wandered
more than 10 or 15 miles from their native villages. The names of thousands
of English immigrants from those years are known, often with the name of
the ship and its captain, the English port they shipped out from, and the
county in Virginia where they landed. A partial list of those whose last
name was Crouch is at the end of this Appendix. As you can see, they came
from many parts of England and they arrived in quite a number of different
counties up the various rivers of colonial Tidewater Virginia.
When the written records say that a person was transported, it occasionally
means someone who was transported to Virginia as a punishment for crime.
They became indentured servants here and, like Daniel Defoe's fictional
heroine, Moll Flanders, many of them prospered in Virginia and became wealthy
planters. Usually, though, the reference to one Englishman being transported
by another means that the transporting person paid the immigrant's passage
(though sometimes it simply means that the transporting sponsor was the
captain or owner of the ship). This is because of the "head right"
system. Everyone who colonized in Virginia was given the right to 50 acres
of land there by the government or the government-sponsored Virginia Company.
However, those who could not pay their own passage on a ship traded away
their head rights for the price of a ticket across the Atlantic, and thus
arrived in Virginia landless. The sponsoring Englishman who paid for the
passage of several less wealthy immigrants could end up with quite a large
amount of Virginia acreage that way.
We should take a close look at the list of names of those Crouch family
members who came over on the various ships, and the various captains or
sponsors, because our ancestors may well be among them. As for the earliest
known Crouch immigrants, Mr. Blaney's men who came over on the Bona Nova
and were living "over against James City" in 1623, they are
not identified by town of origin in the surviving passenger lists (unless
in the still-untranscribed Ferrar Papers), and we can only speculate. The
Bona Nova made several trips before 1620. Perhaps Mr. Blaney brought
Thomas and William, etc, with him, but Tyler says Blaney came in the Blessing
in 1621. Apparently neither these men nor Lieutenant Richard Crouch from
Houghton Bedfordshire were here before 1610, because otherwise they would
have been listed among the "Ancient Planters" at Jamestown by
the Virginia Company.
ADD MAP W/ BLANEY LOC
As you read these miscellaneous record entries, from the various counties
of early Virginia, it is easy to imagine a gradual migration from the earliest
settlements on the southernmost rivers northward to the wilder and unexplored
Indian country to the north and west -- from Mr. Blaney's men at Jamestown
in 1623 up to the King George County home of Joseph Crouch the part-time
schoolmaster between 1700 and 1742. However, it can be the county line which
moved, and the person who was recorded in, say, Westmoreland County in the
1600's could well have been in Stafford County in the 1700's, and yet not
have moved at all. (The Hornbook of Virginia History and the Virginia
State Library's Jamestown Pamphlet series have an excellent table of the
generally north-westward course of Virginia County formation from the eight
original shires to the approximately 100 counties we have today.)
_________
A Partial List of Crouch Family Record Entries from the 17th Century
(These follow in no particular order. There are some duplications where
the same fact turns up in two different books, but these are grouped by
research source in order to facilitate looking up the references.)
The post-massacre census was called "A List of Names of the Living
in Virginia on February 16, 1623," and Hotten's Original Lists of Persons
of Quality (hereinafter Hotten) reproduces it all. Several Crouch family
members were recorded as being among the living. It included Richard living
on The Maine (p. 177), and Thomas "at James Cittye in the corporacion
thereof (probably meaning within the town boundary) (p. 175), and another
Thomas "at the Plantacion over against James Cittie" (p. 180).
A fuller and more careful census in 1624 lists Thomas, age 40, among "Mr.
Blaney's men over the water (Mr. Blaney's Plantacion, James Citty)"
(p. 232). Mr. Blaney's plantation was on the mainland, on the north side
of the James River just west of Jamestown, as shown on the maps reconstructed
by the Jamestown Foundation. Other transcriptions of this census include
a William.
William Crouch was elected a church warden in Elizabeth River Parish, 2
October 1648 (2N 17,61,63,85.)
It is stated in Tyler's Quarterly, Volume 2, page 269, that Crouch's Creek
in Surry county has been called that since at least 1654. Lyon G. Tyler's
1900 Cradle of the Republic (p. 206) says that it was named after
Lt. Richard Crouch, as a local land owner.
The Virginia land office records state that William Crouch's way was paid
by David Mansell, 22 July, 1635. Virginia County records, Vol. VI, part
1, page 25.
Another latecomer, leaving London in the Globe (Jeremy Blackman,
Master) was Robert, on 7 August 1635.
The court records of James City County for 12 January, 1626 mentioned Jane
Crouch as a party to civil litigation, who was married to Captain Bargrave
(a prominent, literate and articulate Jamestown settler) and was the daughter
and co-heiress of Giles Crouch of London (which was also the name of the
Secretary of the Maryland Senate at that time). 27 V 143 n.
John Crouch attested a deposition regarding the death of Captain Henry
Creyke at the Machadoc plantation of Richard Lee on 6 October 1684, and
on 23 March 1684 he had been given his passage to England in the will of
Ann Eltonhead (Corbin) Creyke, mother of Leaticia Corbin. These appear in
the Middlesex County records (Volume 6 of Fleeet's Virginia Colonial Abstracts,
King & Queen County, pp. 27-28.). There are several other entries in
history books to document this incident. (See also, e.g., Sparacio's Deed
& Will Book Absract, Middlesex Co., for 1680-85.) Leaticia Corbin was
the wife of "Richard Lee the Scholar," a member of the Virginia
Governor's Council, and owner of Virginia's finest library at his plantation
on Machadoc Creek.
Head rights for Ann Crouch were obtained in 1663 (1 Records of Colonial
Gloucester County, page 9)
John Crouch was a titheable in Lancaster County, mentioned in the court
session of December 1696, Order Book 1696-1702, page 7 (24 Tyler's Quarterly
125).
(A numerous listing, with page numbers once name of book is found, is
at notebook page 127).
The records of the Virginia Company of London (Volume 2, page 28)
mention Mrs. Mary Tue as being the daughter of Hugh Crouch and executor
of Lieutenant Richard Crouch of Newport News, at a Quarter Court for Virginia
on 3 July, 1622. (This, if correct, might indicate Richard's not being in
Virginia very long, and even contradict the other listings of his presence
in 1623.) So thus it was recorded that Lieutenant Richard Crouch had already
died, owning land in Virginia.
In Virginia in that early time, one could acquire land by "adventures
of the purse," or "adventures of the person," which meant
taking advantage of the head-right system. One acquired land by coming over
to this wild place with all the risks that that entailed, but one might
have to sell the land for the cost of ones passage. The court took note
that Mrs. Mary Tue, his sister, was his heir. Mrs. Mary Tue as the heiress
and executrix of Lieutenant Richard Crouch said that he had left her by
his will 150 acres which Lieutenant Crouch had acquired by the personal
adventures of three servants (at Newport News). Then there was also the
100 acres of land in Diggs's hundred. She showed that the will of Richard
Crouch left her, as his sister, then under the name Mary Younge, this land.
The court also noted that her father was Hugh Crouch, so we thus have the
identity of the lieutenant's father as well. In court that day she was transferring
the 150 acres to Daniel Gookin and the 100 acres to Samuel Jorden. Of course
this would leave open the possibility that neither Hugh nor Richard had
actually left England. Several other records of the Jamestown Colony of
course identified a Richard as being in Virginia, but they mention his coming
there in 1623 and in 1624, and this person or persons might not be the same
as the testator who left his land to his sister Mary Younge.)
At page 29 there is the 26 October 1650 record of a land grant to someone
for paying the transportation of Robert Crouch to Charles City County. (24
William and Mary Quarterly (hereinafter "W") (1) 289) The
same page lists Thomas Crouch in James City County 25 March, 1658 (V.H.R.,
11W (1) 273), Thomas Crouch living on the west side Tappahannock Creek on
10 November 1638 (Patent Book No.1) and another Thomas Crouch serving on
a Grand Jury 25 August, 1662 in York County. A list of immigrants to Virginia
on page 30 shows Nicholas to Elizabeth City in 1637, William to James City
County 22 July 1635, Robert to an unknown county in 1650, Richard to New
Kent County 1655, another William to James City County 1637 and Thomas Crouch
to James City 1639. Several books refer to William Crouch as serving in
the militia from Surry County 1687. (The immigration of another Richard
Crouch to Virginia in 1655 was on 26 April.)
The Virginia colonial records also mention James Crouch of Oxford, England,
24 November 1624. Page 128 mentions William Crouch as a free holder in Surry
County 16 December 1687, William Crouch buying land in York County 23 October
1647 and selling land in lower Norfolk County 20 October 1684. (For William
serving as a soldier in the militia of Surry County 1687, see also Virginia
Colonial Militia F221,V75. The book Some Immigrants to Virginia,
by W.G. Standard (Baltimore 1853), mentions that the Richard Crouch from
Houghton, Bedfordshire who was in James City County in 1623 was born about
1586 and was a carpenter in England, citing XIX /4 Virginia
Magazine 133-134.
William Crouch arrived sometime after 5 July 1642 in lower Norfolk County
and his daughter Alice married Colonel Edward Lloyd. (7 Maryland Historical
Magazine 386). It was Stephen Hamelin who got land in Charles City County
for the transportation of Robert Crouch 26 October 1650 (24W(1) 289). Thomas
Crouch and George Powell owned land adjoining that of John Bishop and his
son John Bishop (By patents dated 25 March 1658 and 4 July 1641) according
to James City County Patent Book #4 (11W(1) 273). James City County Patent
Book #1 shows the 150 acres to Thomas Crouch, 10 November 1638, on the west
side of Tappahannock Creek (9W(1)172(or72)). The service of Thomas Crouch
on a Grand Jury of York County on 25 August 1662 is documented at 26W(1)
30 and 32.
11W(1)86 shows the list of freeholders reported by the Justices of the
Peace of Surry County December 19, 1687 listing William Crouch among the
freeholders available for military service. 23W(1) 274 shows the 23 October
1647 deed from Robert Brock to William Crouch in the York County records.
An entry at 24 V 85 shows a will from Weston in the English county of Hertfordshire
witnessed by John Crouch.
7W(2) 181 shows William Crouch assigning 550 acres in lower Norfolk County
to George Ivy in 1682. Jane Crouch as the daughter of Giles Crouch of London
marrying Captain John Bargrave of Patricksbourn, Kent, is mentioned in the
James City County Court records of 12 January 1626 (27 V 143).
-- 17V196 shows Nathaniel Crouch in Stafford County, 8 October 1700, having
a power of attorney.
-- 7V195 shows Nicholas Crouch transported by Leonard Yeo (who was from
Devon), in 1637.
--3V278 documents William Crouch transported by David Mansell in 1635.
Patent Book 9 (page 208), and Patent Book 10 (page 186), show that there
was a patent for 250 acres granted to William Crouch in Princess Anne County,
Lynhaven Parish, on Wolf's Neck on 6 April 1639. A visit to the two 17th
Century houses still remaining in that spot, the Lynhaven House and the
Adam Thoroughgood House, may give a good idea of how he lived. Patent Books
9, 10, and later ones show lands granted for the head rights of numerous
persons named Crouch to Virginia in the early 18th Century.
Withington, Virginia Gleanings in England, shows on page 556 that
Anthony Langston, probably from Worcestershire, on April 26, 1653 was granted
1,000 acres in New Kent County, on the south side of the tributaries of
the York River adjoining the land of Colonel Mainwaring Hamond, 1,000 acres
for the head rights of 20 people whose passage he had paid. They are all
named, and Richard Crouch was one of these.
Throughout the early 1600s, a number of people named Crouch emigrated to
Virginia, and also to most of the other English colonies. They were particularly
numerous in Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia. The Massachusetts
family, which has since spread out across the American Midwest, began with
a man who arrived in 1619, before the Pilgrims.
The Crouch family members from whom we descend (those who went from Stafford
County to Henry County and then to Boone's Creek Tennessee) are known only
back as far as the year 1700 or so. They are almost certainly connected
to the earlier and quite numerous Crouch family members who came to the
sparsely populated colony of Virginia in the 1600s, but how they are connected
with these earlier Virginians is unknown. It is possible that they were
not connected with these earlier Virginians, but instead started with someone
coming over fresh from England, or coming from Maryland, where many Crouch
family members lived in the 1600s and 1700s, and still live (and a few back
then are known to have migrated to or from Maryland). There are a few reasons
to suspect that, but it is more probable that they are from the same family
that had been in Virginia since at least 1623. Much of their story is complicated
by the fact that as the years went by, new counties were constantly being
carved out of the old counties. It is not certain that a Crouch family member
whose name is listed in another county actually moved. Instead, the county
line may have moved when a new one was created out of the eight original
shires of Virginia. APPENDIX A sets forth a great deal of data about these
probable and possible ancestors in the 1600s.
Before leaving these more mysterious family members, it should be noted
that the first one recorded in what we now call Northern Virginia was John
Crouch, who took from Lord Fairfax a patent on 200 acres in Stafford County
on August 20th of 1708. That land is in what later became Prince William
County between Quantico and Neabsco Creeks, and it is well known how upon
his death it descended to his son William, who later sold it to Grayson
in 1740 and it eventually went to the infamous Rev. Charles Green. The Crouch
family of Fairfax County Virginia almost certainly descends from this adventurous
colonist who carved a farm out of the wilderness in what was then Indian
country. Unless we are related through him-which we may be, since the times
and places are right-or through an earlier ancestor, we are not related
to the Fairfax Crouch family.
JOSEPH CROUCH THE SCHOOLMASTER, AND HIS FAMILY
Our earliest known ancestor was Joseph Crouch, who was born around
1700, was mentioned several times in the records of King George County (which
began, by being carved out of Westmoreland County, in the year 1721), and
died on April 2 of 1742. Joseph Crouch was a literate man, which was rare
in those days. He signed his name rather than an X, and on at least two
occasions the County Court paid him for schooling other people's children.
Even though most of the early colonial records of King George and Stafford
counties have been destroyed, there remains an inventory of his estate when
he died. It included a Bible and other books. (Joseph's wife Ann was left
with three sons, Joseph, John and James. These boys were apprenticed out
to tradesmen by their mother after their father's death.)
In King George County during his short lifetime Joseph Crouch the schoolmaster
took a lease from John Travis of Stafford County for fifty acres for the
life of himself and his wife Ann on November 7 of 1729 (Book I, page 630
of the land records). But another lease to Joseph Crouch of King George
County from Mr. Travis of Stafford County for 50 acres on 16 April 1729
is listed in Book I, Part II, pages 636-637, and is apparently for the same
land, along the Rappahannock River shore of King George County. There were
other transactions shown, as Joseph Crouch witnessed the deeds, wills and
official acts of many others. He was paid on two occasions for schooling
Margaret, the daughter of Joseph Summer, deceased. (See as to this July
11, 1738, Stafford County Will Book M, p. 261. We do have to bear in mind,
though, that this does not conclusively establish that Joseph followed the
schoolmaster trade: his schooling Margaret might mean only that he paid
for her instruction, and was reimbursed.) He was also mentioned as
a grand jury witness in 1724. For this, of course, he would have to have
been 21 years old or more.
(The fact that Joseph Crouch had a wife named Ann is further proved
by one of two identical leases from John Travis. The one recorded in Deed
Book I, page 630 for King George County dated 16 April 1729 was for 50 acres
on the north side of the Rappahannock River, on the south side of Poplar
Swamp, along the lines of Hugh Williams and James Lamb and the Great Valley.
The description of the boundaries is detailed, but all of the landmarks
are perishable things such as trees.)
. Joseph Crouch the schoolmaster was perhaps prominent in early King George
County, and certainly busy with official acts. At least a dozen of them
between 1721 and 1733 are recorded in the few Deed Books and Will Books
of early King George, Essex and Stafford County that still survive.
For these public acts Joseph would have to be at least 21 years of age.
Since some were in 1721 (the county's first year -- and he does not appear
in the Richmond County records), we can theorize that he was born no later
than 1700. The Inventory of Joseph's estate in fact gives an intimate glimpse
into his life by listing his livestock, farm equipment and household goods.
The presence of the Crouch Family on the Northern Neck before the
records of Joseph Crouch appear is well established, and it would be good
to know which of these earlier people are related to us, but we may never
know.
Joseph and Ann's descendants maybe traced at the Joseph
Crouch m. Ann Reeds - Family Tree page
How to contribute information or links || Sources
and Authorities