One of the long standing mysteries in the Crews family, if you define a mystery as "without proof," is what happened to Jeremiah Crews, son of David Crews and Annie Magee, after he left Madison County, Kentucky. I detailed up-to-date research on him in my latest edition of Metes & Bounds II: David Crews, Ancestors & Descendants, but unfortunately, I still was unable to find proof concerning his whereabouts.
It is generally believed that he is the Jeremiah Cruze that appears in the 1830 Vigo County, Indiana census. Notice the name change, although whether it was intentional on the census taker's part or an accident is not known. It is told that Jeremiah and Elijah, upset at being cut out of their father's will, changed their last names.
What I did not detail in my book were the children of Jeremiah Cruze. While I have found listings online, including on Ancestry, there was little proof as to how or why those children belonged in the family. Therefore, I chose to leave conjecture out of the 2nd edition.
I was contacted recently by an ancestor of Jeremiah's who was able to supply a bit more information in regards to two possible children born to him. Although there is still a lack of proof, for those individuals trying to locate a proven link anything is valuable at this point. Some of what I will relate in this blog posting and the next is information from her, and some is what I have since added.
While Jeremiah disappears after the 1830 Indiana census, and we will assume at this point he had died, a David Cruise is found in the 1840 Sullivan County, Indiana census. Sullivan County borders Vigo County. The 1830 census lists 3 males aged 30 to 39, 2 females aged 20 to 29, 3 males under 5 and 1 male aged 5 to 9. It is believed at the present this man is possibly linked to Jeremiah Cruse and is, therefore, a grandson of David Crews and Annie Magee.
David Crews (this spelling now used), the householder in the 1840 census, married Jane Jewel in Vigo County on 1 May 1833 (Indiana Marriage Records courtesy of a Jeremiah Cruse descendant). It is possible that David himself died by 1850, for the 1850, 1860, and 1870 U. S. Federal censuses for Vigo County, specifically Honey Creek Township, enumerate Jane Cruse as the head of the household and her children are living with her. Her son, Zachariah Crews, later indicated in his Civil War enlistment records that he was born in Sullivan County, Indiana in 1838.
Below is an 1858 map of Honey Creek Township in Vigo County, Indiana. Just to the southeast of the number 29, which is about 3/4 of the way down the map on the left side, surveys are shown for D. Cruse and J. Nelson, as well as another survey to the right of that one for D. Cruse.
Anyone wishing to connect with this descendant researching Jeremiah is free to contact me for her email. As I told her, and we both agreed, at this point it will likely take deep digging in courthouse records in several locations to connect the threads of Jeremiah Crews and his children. She plans to work further on his line in the near future.
Next week we will explore a possible connection with a daughter of Jeremiah's, and the week after that we will look further into Jane Jewel Cruse.
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