It’s me again. Well may be I should give you son background aboat myself.

My name is John Jim Crew. I am the son of the late William Joseph Crew, who was the son of William Joseph Crew, whose father was John Jim Crew.

I am a SA ‘colourd’ but not from slave decent.

We are staying in South-Africa. I was born in Port Nolloth RSA , while my father was born in Vanrhynsdorp RSA. Unfortunatly it is here where things starts to blur……

The interesting part however is that my grandfather was married to a colourd woman call ‘Antjie Vess’[not quite sure of the spelling] who drowned when my father was 4 years of age. After that he left for Cape Town where he was married to a white woman.Since than there were no contact between them.

My father now ‘Coloured’ married a coloured woman,Sarah Balie,aswell and I was their first born.

We were brought-up without any connection or contact with others carying the Crew surname.

We were an island, but could it be..? No man is an island.

This was bottering me for quite some time, till I started do do some research. Suddenly the Crew Surname sprang-up all over the globe, but our family still remains a missing link. When I accidentally came across your work I though to give it a try by contacting you.

Why ? Well I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe you can share me some lite.

Hope to hear from you

Onother Crew in the dark

Note: I think the motto is universal

Thanks

JJ

Quite a stunning job you did. I’m from South-Africa and it is unfortunate that not much information of the Crew’s are availible.
May be you can hook me up with some-one who can help me find the Crew-trail on the Africa continent.

Goodluck

JJ Crew

The Crewe town I was referring to was the one right next to Nantwich, where their names are often heard together now.

Unlike many of my relatives, I personally have yet to visit either Wales or England. So thanks again for adding what you know.

Crewe by Farndon and one of the Crewes are both literally across the river Dee from Wales, and both tiny villages that probably go back a hell of a long way. They’re ten miles from Chester and their postal address today is Chester, but to call them a suburb is a little ambitious.

Crewe proper – these days – is actually a railway town of 70,000 souls built on the village of Coppenhall, still within the diocese of Chester, and is known as Crewe purely because the railways station that started the settlement – finished in 1837 – was built in fields adjacent to Crewe Hall, and not far from another village called Crewe which has now been renamed Crewe Green. This is twenty five miles away from Chester.

Are you keeping up?

The original village had a population of 70 in 1831 and 40,000 in 1860, required to work at the railway works that sprung up about a mile north of the station in Coppenhall.

Don’t get too bogged down with the final E of Crewe: Ranulph Crew was Ranulph Crewe too: e were an illiterate bunch back then: just got to look at the people we exported to Ellis Island to give North America a weird bunch of surnames: things were often spellt phonetically which makes life simpler but serves to confuse when tracking things back.

Ranulph (also Randolph and Ranulphe – couldn’t even get his first name right) Crew(e) was an important bloke in the 16th and 17th centuries, the son of a tanner in Nantwich – five miles away and the dominant town in the area when the railways were looking for a base, but reliant on the canal system and unwilling to accommodate the new-fangled steam railways.

As you will hopefully be aware, we don’t all live in castles on this side of the pond, and w don’t tend to have our own coat of arms until such time as we become very important. it’s unlikely in the extreme that Ranulph’s father passed any down, and Crew crest is very well known hereabouts – did I mention I’m in Crewe?

Bizarrely, I’ve hunted high and low for the crest that I know so well on-line and I’ve never seen it there: all I’ve seen are the blue and silver ones you display, which I’ve only ever seen on American sites, and those from the borough – one of which is blue but otherwise very different, and takes elements from other crests in the region.

I’m pretty certain that these are two of the Crew(e) family crests – two generations of the same family with subtleties through intermarriage – and the reason for my certainty is that one of them is from the tower at Crewe Hall, and the other is a later date from the Hotel half a mile away from the Hall, called the Crewe Arms, which is dated 1880. I can email you copies of them with pleasure: the motto is correct – or at least it corresponds to what is on the ones based at the family seat.

Obviously there is no guarantee of anything: each member of a family would have their own coat of arms, subtly different than their antecedents and the tower of the hall is dated much later than the original Jacobean Mansion, which was largely damaged by fire, but there’s no logical route through from the blue and silver one favoured by American genealogy sites and this … unless you count the motto.

There is a chance, of course, that a Crew from the other Crewe had a different crest, but the motto, and there were other Crewes – a Lord Crewe was connected to the Bishop of Durham, and seems to have had a white rampant lion on blue.

And we used to think the future was full of secrets.

You write:
“Why are the older Christian denominations hanging on so much harder than Protestantism in Europe?”

I don’t have a clue at this time, but I will research that point.

You write:
“However, the New Testament was not written by Greeks (with the possible exception of Luke, who only wrote 2 books of it). It was written by Jews (and mostly TO Jews… and Romans) IN Greek language (the lingua franca of that day, like English today). And a vast majority of Greeks thought Christian doctrine was the most laughable foolishness they’d ever heard of.”

Your last point first. I have never heard of this (vast majority of Greeks) so I will look into it (this is a hobby of mine). Regarding the first point, I have heard of and have been looking into the position that the four gospels are not written by their reputed authors, and in fact of the 27 books of the New Testament only eight are written by their reputed authors. Seven of those eight are some of the 13 reputed letters of Paul and the other is Revelation…by John…but no one knows which John. Interesting stuff.

You write:
“But if Dobzhansky was deist, he obviously didn’t accept an “evolutionary” guess at the ORIGIN OF SPECIES. How life itself began and how totally new species form are questions that any biologist can only answer with theories, not observable facts.”

Haven’t gone into his life yet, just picked up the name of his paper, and a little more, a while back. At this point I think he believed that God started first life, but in elementary form, and over billions of years it evolved into everything else. I don’t really know yet, but this is already on my list of things to explore.

I hope you and family are well and thank you for your “talking” with me.

However, the New Testament was not written by Greeks (with the possible exception of Luke, who only wrote 2 books of it). It was written by Jews (and mostly TO Jews… and Romans) IN Greek language (the lingua franca of that day, like English today). And a vast majority of Greeks thought Christian doctrine was the most laughable foolishness they’d ever heard of. So I’m not sure if that was a solid answer to the original question: Why are the older Christian denominations hanging on so much harder than Protestantism in Europe?

Anyway, I think I agree with Dobzhansky: OF COURSE biological sciences only make sense with evolution. Evolution is biologically proven and observable… WITHIN SPECIES.

But if Dobzhansky was deist, he obviously didn’t accept an “evolutionary” guess at the ORIGIN OF SPECIES. How life itself began and how totally new species form are questions that any biologist can only answer with theories, not observable facts. Some biologist can’t help but admit belief in a supernatural, while others retain the hope that Darwin’s theories will yet explain it all.

You write:
“your question, if I had to pick one scientific field, it would be Biology (including zoology and other biological studies). In essence, I think the very existence of earth’s life strongly supports belief in a supernatural (not saying it necessarily proves anything about one particular take on God).”

I have heard it said that the biology sciences are perhaps the strongest argument for evolution. A famous biologist, Theodore Dobzhansky wrote: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” In 1973. Interestingly he was a Deist, that is he believed a God started everything, but then walked away; so to speak.

You write:
“Great point about England, but what about Greece’s LONG history of secularism and philosophy, or Italy’s progressive thinkers?”

The Greeks were the ones who wrote all of the New Testament…or at least all the autographs were written in the Greek language, but as you say they don’t seem to let religion interfere in everyday matters. Italy of course has the Vatican and it seems to be in everything there.
twom

I couldn’t agree more about the Catholic church, and what I’ve seen of mainstream Christianity in general. It’s a confused mess.

In answer to your question, if I had to pick one scientific field, it would be Biology (including zoology and other biological studies). In essence, I think the very existence of earth’s life strongly supports belief in a supernatural (not saying it necessarily proves anything about one particular take on God).

I’ll be the first to admit I’m nothing like an expert on anything scientific (maybe becoming an atheist would’ve made me automatically an expert). But Richard Dawkins’ discussion of life’s beginning in “The God Delusion” is as desparate-sounding and hollow as anything I’ve heard from a fundamentalist Baptist.

Great point about England, but what about Greece’s LONG history of secularism and philosophy, or Italy’s progressive thinkers?

Quite right on the reproduction stats. Muslims all over Europe are reproducing twice as fast as any other ethnicity. I hear England is having some troubles with them wanting sharia law amongst themselves…is this wise I wonder?

You write:
“And which scientific data is it that discredits the possibility of a supernatural?”
Do you know of any scientific field or data that supports the supernatural i.e. magic?
Catholics baffle me also. The Catholic Church supports scientific research and allows the masses to believe in evolution and that the Bible is not inerrant and that Noah’s Flood never happened among other things, and yet they have a Pope going around saying that using a condom is bad for the fight against AIDS in Africa. Go figure.

I Enjoy your blog.

That’s pretty intelligent, isn’t it? Break down a basic element of the species’ survival (the family) and just start dying off. Brilliant. Maybe it’s a valiant effort to help Mother Nature?