Why care about pedigree?

If you answer, “Because Nate Crew’s a history nerd,” you’re not far off. But there’s also more to it.

“Crew? As in ship’s crew? Cool name. Never heard it.”

After hearing that a million times, I decided to find out what’s in a name. Thanks to Dad and Grampa, I’d always known the family was from Wales, but not much more.

So I temporarily became a genealogy nerd, the type of nerd even I would’ve laughed at before. 

Turns out the Welsh have been known for obsession with pedigree since King Arthur’s time. So maybe it was something in my blood that made me discard loathing for research to get a glimpse of our family heritage.

Census stats and figures, according to http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/, show the highest concentration of Crews still living in Wales. After the UK, the most Crews can also be found in western Australia, descendants of Welsh migrants. (Last I checked, anyway.)

As soon as I started picking at Crew family roots, I was amazed. The roots seem to go way deeper than I expected.

Coat of Arms

The coat-of-arms idea (heraldry) started so nobles and knights could be identified in the heat of battle. When the Normans invaded Britain in 1066, they brought European heraldry with them.

At least one source (surnamedb.com) claims that, through the centuries, branches of the Crew family have boasted “no less than ten Coats of Arms.” There is consensus, however, on the one that became most associated with the Crew name.

Motto: Sequor nec Inferior (“I follow, yet not inferior.”)

Design: “…an azure shield with a silver lion rampant, the crest being a silver lion’s gamb, armed gules, emerging from a gold ducal coronet.”

Yeah, whatever that looks like. I guess the above image is someone’s incomplete idea of it.

Note: From here on I’ll highlight things most directly related to the Crews in blue, like this.

Ancient Origins 

Crews come from way further back than their medieval coat of arms. Our beginnings are among the ancient Celtic tribes of Britons known today as the Welsh.

In Britain, the town of Crewe sits on the English side of northern Wales’ border. It’s basically a suburb of Chester. Crewe’s Old Welsh name came from a wooden fence-like fish trap stretched across the river there thousands of years ago.

The history of today’s Chester county and the natives of Crewe is as old as that of Wales as an entity.

About 10 years after Christ left earth, Rome began trying to subdue the savage Britons. Like the rest of Europe’s once-dominant Celts, the Britons hindered themselves by warring among their tribes instead of organizing together.

Even so, Britain was Rome’s most costly and difficult Celtic conquest.

Before Julius Caesar’s conquest, the mountain kingdoms of Wales were already well-established, complete with their Celtic druid religion (to which the original roots of Halloween can be traced).

“The fierce resistance of the tribes in Wales meant that two out of the three Roman legions in Britain were stationed on the Welsh border” (britannia.com).

Chester started as a large Roman army camp.

Long story short, it was the advent of Christianity that finally “Romanized” many Briton tribes. Western emperor Magnus Maximus (“Macsen Wledig” of Welsh legend) married a Briton princess, establishing a close friendship with the emerging Briton royal family.

By the time Macsen left Britain to itself in AD 383, the Christianized Britons were mostly united in one kingdom.

Chester had become a key city in the developing Romano-Briton culture. (Ireland’s Saint Patrick came from this new Christian Celtic Britain.) As the new nation slowly developed, the future seemed promising.

But, less than three centuries later, the Britons’ glory days under a mysterious King Arthur were shattered by the onslaught of Angle and Saxon tribes from Germany.

In the legendary Battle of Chester in the early 600s, Arthur finally stopped the westward push of Anglo-Saxon invaders. However, backed into the corner now called Wales, the Britons grimly realized the Germanic invaders were on their island to stay.

 

Cofio Cymru (Remember Wales)

The history of the Welsh Crews requires a basic understanding of the history of Wales itself. So here it is.

Arthur’s legendary battle was the first of two that defined Wales as a distinct country. Both crucial battles happened at Chester.

The second Chester battle several decades later, though, was a Briton defeat. The Anglo-Saxons beat king Cadwallon of Gwynedd. Now Wales was permanently isolated, severed from their Scot cousins of northern Britain.

After Cadwallon and his son both died fighting in the late 600s, the Welsh gave up their bloody struggles to regain the north. They remained for centuries a lonely island of bitter resistance against the English.

“Cymru” (Anglicized “Cambria”), the Welsh word for Wales, was coined at this time. It means “compatriots,” referring to the Britons’ resolve in what they called the “never-ending war against the Saxon invaders.” The English word “Wales,” however, derives from Old English ”foreigner” or “barbarian.”

In 784, the Welsh defiantly built Offa’s Dyke. It stands today, still the landmark that separates England from the regions of Wales.

The struggle went on, year after year, generation after generation, century after century.

Too often, the Britons kept turning their bitterness against each other. Princes incessantly fought and died for the “crown of Arthur,” lusting after the title “King of the Britons.”

From 844 to 878, Rhodri the Great did unite Wales. He successfully defeated Danish Viking invasions, but was then killed battling against the Welsh Mercian clan.

After a period of anarchy, Prince Llewelyn ap Seisilt gathered power and put a final end to Viking raids. His son Griffith seized back South Wales from England and waged a fierce war against the Saxon enemies. He was finally defeated in 1063. 

In Britain, the saying too often rings true from Mel Gibson’s movie Braveheart: “History is written by those who have hanged heroes.” Due to suppression and revision, much of Welsh history remains shrouded in mystery to this day. Old family records are often no exception.

It’s from the year 1086 that we have the earliest remaining spelling of “Crev” in the Domesday Book of records. The town’s name was spelled “Cruue” in 1288, but from more ancient times it had likely been spelled in more Latin ways, like “Croux.”

Since those times, several notable Crew family members have made enough impact to be now recorded in Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography.

But from ancient times, the Welsh simply used “ap” (i.e. “son of”) instead of a common family surname. Surnames became necessary with the oppressive English poll tax. When one family took the name of its city, it was often an indication that this was the established landowning “lord of the manor” family. This was likely the case with the Crews.

Although some Crews have eventually become identified as English, they can still be traced back to ethnic Welsh roots.

When the Normans invaded, the Welsh initially found common ground in a mutual enmity toward Anglo-Saxons. But soon, the new Anglo-Norman power began taking advantage of Welsh disorder. When the Welsh again united and arose under Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, King Henry I responded in the early 1100s with a massive 3-army invasion. Subjugating several Welsh princes, he brutally tried to Anglicize the people.

It didn’t quite work.

Henry II had to invade again in 1157, but his army fled from the combined forces of King Owain Gwynedd and prince Rhys ap Griffith.

Eventually, Henry gained the allegiance of Rhys, and brought a semblance of order to Wales. During this time, the Welsh church merged with the English church, losing its independence.

Llewelyn the Great (1194-1240) did secure an independence from England. But in old age, hoping to secure lasting peace, he placed the country in feudal dependence to the English king. This infuriated the Welsh people.

Many of them finally supported his son Llewelyn II, who defied England again. So yet again, Edward I of England was forced to invade and conquer Wales–twice.

Finally, Llewelyn II was killed, and Wales was forced into bloody submission to England. It was in this humiliating time that the title “Prince of Wales” became that of heir to the England’s throne. The infamous 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan laid out plans for the ruthless subjugation of the unruly Welsh “once and for all.”

The English victory came just in time for England to deal with William Wallace’s Scot rebellion in the north. (Wallace was, by the way, the son of Welsh refugees who’d fled north from Edward’s reprisals.) Unfortunately, Wales was entirely beaten and war-weary, and in no position to help with the new rebellion.

Some sources report that, around this time or later, a law in Chester said if a Welshman were spotted within city walls after dark, he was free game to shoot with arrows. The Welsh, even into the early 20th century, were regarded as a lawless criminal race.

In 1400, Wales once more took arms against England under the legendary Owain Glyndwr (Anglicized “Owen Glendower”). Both a skilled warrior and cunning statesman, Glyndwr set up an independent Wales, the memory of which still makes the nation proud. 

Glyndwr established a Welsh university system, and even made the church independent from England again. This organized Welsh revolution put England into panic.

However, at the height of his glory, Glyndwr vanished.

How and where he died remains a mystery. So a legend took root that he will one day return to lead Cymru to victory again. This was one of the few hopes that sustained the Welsh through the dark days ahead.

The fall from Glyndwr’s glory was harsh. English rulers persecuted the Welsh severely. Even an Englishman daring enough to marry a Welsh woman would be placed under the same load of restrictions and taxes as the Welsh. Ironically, though, it was in this time that Welsh poetry flourished.

It was also from around this time that we have the oldest remaining spelling of “Crewe” as an official surname. In the vicinity of Crewe town in Cheshire in 1539, Thomas Crewe witnessed his son Gilbert’s christening.

In the mid-16^th century, Wales was officially united to England, and thus given some rights such as representation in Parliament.

But old tensions die hard. Tudor monarchs banned Welsh language from official proceedings and abolished many ancient Welsh customs and laws. Right of assembly continued to be denied, and hopes of independence began to fade away.

Even until the early 20th century, some English legislation sought to stamp out the Welsh language in education, viewing the persistent culture as a “source of crime” and potential anarchy. In reality, it was England that had, over a millenium of repression, made the Welsh a hardened, defiant race. To this day, relative poverty is Wales’ inheritance.

Today, however, the ancient language and culture proudly survives among the Welsh. They are even known as a good-natured people. Also surviving (especially since “devolution” began) is a strong, growing demand for increased independence from England. In fact, Welsh football players’ refusal to represent the UK in Olympic games accounts partly for why Britain hasn’t fielded an Olympic soccer team in decades. And, while no longer warriors, the Welsh do keep the ancient rivalry alive in the sport of rugby.

Crews in America

The Welsh first came to America as dissenting religious refugees. Pennsylvania was their haven. Despite their tiny numbers, Welsh settlers in America played a huge role in both fighting against England and founding the new nation. The list of big Welsh American names would take up more space than I care to use. Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Boone are two of many examples. Despite Welsh immigrants being clannish and using a foreign language, George Washington once noted that “good Welshmen make good Americans.”

Back in 1621, Randall Crew had settled in Virginia, where his descendants became farmers. They may have been the first Crews in America. From the earliest days of settlement, the Welsh have immigrated to escape their misery in Britain. The 19th century saw the greatest migration.

Besides Pennsylvania, another concentration of Welsh was in east Tennessee. Their cultural influence there can still be seen in things like old Smoky Mountain music and whisky (Jack Daniels was from a Welsh family).

Coal mining eventually became the major industry of poverty-stricken Wales. That was the career of my most recent ancestors up to my grandfather. They lived in Tumble, a small town near Llanelli in South Wales.

My grandfather, William R. Crew, immigrated as a boy with his family in the late 1920s, settling among the Welsh coal miners of Chester, Pennsylvania. His first language was Welsh, and his love for that heritage never waned.

But he was also a grateful new American. While his brother and cousins fought World War II in the British military, Grampa served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, enlisting even before his citizenship application was complete. He retired several decades later as a chaplain lieutenant colonel. Outside of military service, he was a minister in the Assemblies of God church.

My father John Crew, named after his grandfather, grew up in Chester, PA. He and two brothers followed Grampa in U.S. military careers, and he raised a family of six children like his father had. Grampa named my oldest brother Owen, after the Welsh legend.

So far, it seems, my branch of Crews has yet to put down solid roots in one state. Wandering from place to place has become almost a family trait. I’m no exception. As soon as I got married and finished college, I hit the road. My wife and I are now teaching EFL in Asia.

Travelling to history-rich countries has a strange way of awakening interest in my own ethnic heritage. That is one reason that, while a satisfied American, I still remain proud to call Wales “mae hen wlad fy nhadau“ (the land of my fathers).

We are one of many small branches of the tree, now scattered over the world. But what will always connect us to each other and our heritage is the name Crew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/