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| Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2009. This web site was launched on 7 June 1998 |
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The Crouch Family from England to Tasmania The Crouch family in England were predominantly agricultural labourers from Sussex. A trawl through parish records shows them living in the villages of Burwash, Brightling, Mountfield and Battle, all within close proximity to one another near the famous Sussex town of Hastings. Every school child in Britain knows about Hastings (1066 and all that) when William the Conqueror landed and did battle with King Harold who was struck in the eye by an arrow and killed. Although this famous event is called the Battle of Hastings, the battle actually took place alongside Battle Abbey a short distance away. The Norman conqueror became William I, one of England’s first true Kings. Whether the Crouch family was there then is unknown however - the earliest ancestor found so far is John Crouch, born around 1562 in Burwash. Seven generations of Crouch’s follow with William Crouch being born in Battle in 1834. For whatever reasons, William left England as a paying traveler for Australia along with one of four brothers, Simon. They departed from Liverpool on April 25, 1857 aboard the Star of the South. They arrived in Melbourne, Australia on August 5, 1857. On November 9, 1859, William was married to Ann Baird, a twenty-five year old housekeeper from Aidrie, Lanarkshire in Scotland. The couple went on to have several children. The oldest boy was named John Baird Crouch, born in Collingwood, Victoria in 1860. John Baird had five brothers and a sister all born in the same locality (Yarram, Alberton, Welshpool and Sale). Like their English forebears, the family was predominantly a farming one. On September 30, 1886, John Baird married Catherine Elizabeth Hughes (nee Britton) at Fitzroy, Victoria. John Baird and Catherine do not appear to have had children of their own but they did go on to raise a family of adopted children over subsequent years. Of those we know about were Archibald, born as Rhyl Garrrett on June 10, 1892; Ruby Sylvia Garrett, born 1893; Ralph Whitticomb, born 1897; Raymond, born 1898; Charles Henry, born 1901; Wentworth, birth unknown though we know he was killed by a falling tree in 1924; Ronald, birth unknown and Russell James, born 1904. Due to a lack of official records at the time and a fire that destroyed the records of the Kenly Boys' Home in Hobart (from where some of the boys were adopted whilst aged between 5 and 7 years old), no documentary evidence has been found for the adoptions. For reasons that are not clear, the family appear to have broken apart and we know that at least several of the siblings were never in contact with one another again. Their stories so far as we know them will be related in the following chapters. One thing we do know is that this alienation of the Crouch family seems to have stemmed from around the time of the First World War and the death of Catherine Elizabeth Crouch in 1914. |