Category: Crew-ENG

It has been very difficult to pin down the ancestry of Susan Sheppard. Any documents that I can find that I believe to be associated with Susan, is signed with an X, and this is the same for William Crew her husband. So if neither of them could read or write, I’m not sure who determined the spelling of Sheppard as there are documents that could be related where the spelling is Shepherd.

I believe this is Susan and William’s marriage record of July 6, 1817.

Going back further than this has been a challenge. Especially when looking back attempting to link Susan Sheppard with the Marie deFawcett myth. There’s just nothing there.

Census records:

From the above I can safely conclude that Susan was born somewhere between 1799 and 1801, give or take a year on either side.

A crucial name in identifying which family is which is Hone.

In the 1851 census, in the household of William Crew is James Hone, son-in-law, is married Eliza and eventually they immigrated to Canada. Also living with the Crew family is Samuel Sheppard and his wife Sarah. Samuel is Susan Crew’s brother while Sarah’s maiden name is Hone. James Hone and Sarah Hone are siblings.

In the 1841 MEOT census, Samuel Sheppard and Sarah are with a Mary (age 21) and James Hone age 11. In the 1841 Lewisham census, Charles Sheppard, age 80, with Ann, age 50, with Daniel “Own” (Hone) who eventually married Mary Ann Swallow Sheppard. Also with the Sheppard family is Benjamin age 14 and an Elizabeth Brock age 10. I have no information on Elizabeth.

All information leads me to the conclusion that Susan Sheppard’s parents were Charles and Ann (Charles first wife). Two years after Susan married William Crew, in 1819, Charles (widower) marries Ann Swallow. Census indicates that Ann Swallows was 20 years younger than Charles.

So Susan’s mother is Ann somebody, I’m just not sure who. And NOT Marie deFawcett.

This seems the best candidate for the marriage of Charles Sheppard to Ann. This is Charles of Lewisham, who signs with an X. And the date of marriage is 2 years before Susan’s birth.

Basically what it comes down to is me “choosing” who I believe to be Susan’s mother: I choose Ann West.

Images of Susan and William Crew’s Children

These are basically the only children who lived to “adulthood” and to a time when pictures could be taken.

As I posted in a Crew History, Tales and Truths, Bethnal Green was not a great place to live and everyone had a brickyard. Competition likely made eking out a living extremely difficult. Mortality rates were high and life expectancy rates were low. Rachel had lost a baby in 1863 and Eliza lost her last two babies in 1868 and 1870.

Life expectancy was low. Of 1,632 deaths in 1839, 1,258 (77 per cent) were of ‘mechanics, servants, and labourers’, who had an expectancy of 16 years, 273 of tradesmen, with an expectancy of 26, and 101 of gentry and professional people, with an expectancy of 45.

Although Bethnal Green was still the main silkweaving parish, the industry was in decline and weavers were under-employed. Occupations such as tailoring, furniture making, and costermongering replaced it but none was prosperous, sweated labour was prevalent, and the population was caught in a downward spiral of poverty. A modern analysis has placed Bethnal Green as the second poorest London parish in 1841, the poorest by 1871.

Bethnal Green: Building and Social Conditions from 1837 to 1875 | British History Online (british-history.ac.uk)

So, on 11 May, 1871, Richard and Rachel Pennell left 77 Esteny St., London, England and along with Rachel’s sister Eliza and her husband James Hone, and headed for Liverpool to board the S. S. Niger¹ that arrived in Quebec City on 29 May, 1871.

The two families boarded the train to Sand Point (McNabb Township, Renfrew), only to find it was the “end of the steel” and also no employment. They finally settled in Carlton Place, Ontario (Beckwith Township, Lanark Co.), where they built a log cabin large enough for two families and divided it, living as such until they could get better lodgings.

Keep in mind, the Hones brought 4 children with them and the Pennells brought 4. So that makes 12 people in one log cabin.

Even though Carlton Place was very remote then, the Pennells and the Hones established a brick yard. However, lumber was ample and very inexpensive and the settlers homes were mostly constructed from log timbers. The forced the two families to try farming in Horton Township which was unsuccessful. [Not sure why. There were many successful Smiths and Eadys who farmed in Horton Township]

Rachel wanted to return to England, but Richard tried again by applying for a land grant in Bonfield Township at Rutherglen where they obtained crown land in approximately 1879.

Richard loaded his family (now 6 children) into a sleigh and made his way in the middle of winter to his 200 acres. The original log house stood on the property until 1990, when it was dismantled by Jourgen Mohr who was planning to rebuild it in another location as a heritage house. To the best of my knowledge, he never did and the fate of the timbers are unknown. I have nothing in my notes about the Hone family, but they ended up in Rutherglen as well.

The following is an email from Wayne with his thoughts on how this “adventure” may have happened and the circumstances that may have been factors:

The best way to get cows, horses, furniture from Renfrew to Rutherglen before the train would have been to do what A. W. Smith did. Horse and sleigh on the ice up the Ottawa River to Mattawa. Then up the Mattawa to the bottom of the Lake Talon chutes. Then overland to Rutherglen.

Or maybe there was a trail from the Mattawa River to Rutherglen but running your sleigh on nice flat lake ice like Lake Talon would be tempting. Only one portage at the chutes. J. R. Booth would have had this water route well worn. It’s the same route used by Samuel de Champlain and the [Indigenous Peoples]. Just need to do it in the winter.

Once you get on the Lake Talon, you could go up Sparks Creek to the Blue Sea Creek and then you’re home. There was a store/hotel on Lake Talon where Sparks Creek joins the lake. It was run by ??? Green (Andy Green’s Dad). There would have been other road houses along the way spaced out a days travel apart. You most likely would buy cows and chickens from other farmers. But guns, axes, horses, wagons, etc. would be best carried in with the wife and kids.

The roads, if any, would be best travelled in the winter with a horse and sleigh, sort of like the ice road truckers do today. The portage at the Chutes would have been a challenge – its long and steep. Would have needed some help from the loggers there. Maybe send the wife and kids on the train after you bought the farm and got set up.

2020, Dec 8, Email – Wayne Smith

Rachel was a devoted Anglican and was hostess to many Vicars who passed through Rutherglen, mostly on horseback. She died April 21, 1916 on Good Friday morning at the home of her daughter, Mrs. James McNamara, at 93 McLeod St., North Bay. Her last words were, “I can hear the angels singing”. In the church records it is written that she was “a true and earnest daughter of the church, worked for the parish from its foundation.” She was known as an Angel of Mercy, one that was always on call, attending the sick and needy.

The church burial records for Richard indicate that he was a “True and faithful son of Mother Church. R.I.P.”

¹S. S. Niger Ship’s Log #71135078-4581

Most of this information is from Edna Ollivier and Myrtle Connelly

As with the Pennells, it has been a challenge to get any solid proof of heritage. However, when the Crews immigrated to Canada, they brought with them tales that, regardless of how much work and research is done, cannot be verified in any way. The original source of these stories seems to be from Effie Scott who was the granddaughter of Eliza Hone.

Tale #1: Marie deFawcett

It has been verified that Rachel’s father, William Henry Crew was a successful brickmaker in London, England. His sons, Richard and William (the younger), as well as John Bradfield all worked for him in London. James Hone (Eliza Crew’s husband) was living with the Crews in 1851 and reports that he is a brickmaker as well.

In 1851, the Crews lived at 4 Parkplace with Samuel Sheppard’s family (Susan’s brother) and another family (relationship unknown).

The story that has been handed down through Effie Scott (Rutherglen, Eliza’s Crew descendant) and perhaps from Alice Pennell (Rachel’s daughter), was that Susan Crew’s mother was Marie de Fawcett.

This is from a document authored by Myrtle Connolly, nee Keech, who’s great-grandmother was Rachel Crew.

Marie deFawcett was a descendent from the Imperial House of Orleans, an important part of French Royalty. The first Duke of Orleans was the son of Charles V of France and was born 1372. His name was Louis de Valois.

The following is from my own “book” I authored in 1994.

Susan Shepherd’s parentage is still somewhat of a mystery. Her mother was definitely [NOT proven and unlikely] Maria deFawcett, but its possible that deFawcett was Marie’s married name and that when she married a second time to a William Shepherd, he adopted Susan. Its possible that Marie was a French Hugenot who fled France after witnessing the murder of her parents. [not possible as Marie’s life is not contemporary with the Hugenots. Possibly her parents or grandparents]. DeFawcett, according to the French Hugenot Society of England, is an English name, not a French one.

I did some digging into the Hugenot immigration to England and my notes say that around 1705, Hugenots settled in south England, Canterbury, Kent, Sandwich, Faversham, Shoreditch, London & Spitalfields. Since the beheadings of Marie Antonoinette and Louis XVI didn’t take place until 1793, the Hugenot movement must have continued on until the end of the century. The only surviving daughter of the King and Queen, Marie-Theresa didn’t get herself out of France (a 2nd time) until 1815. (Wikipedia)

1841 England Census finds William and Susan Crew with their children on John Street, Bethnal Green. Since William allegedly had a “successful” brickmaking business that employed at least 4 men (Charles Pennell, Richard Pennell, William Crew (the younger) and James Hone), I did an internet search of the history of Bethnal Green to see if I could find anything.

Huguenot influence was diluted by outsiders from other parts of London. Over 80 per cent of Bethnal Green’s population in 1851 and 1861 had been born in London.  Although Bethnal Green was still the main silkweaving parish, the industry was in decline and weavers were under-employed. Occupations such as tailoring, furniture making, and costermongering replaced it but none was prosperous, sweated labour was prevalent, and the population was caught in a downward spiral of poverty. A modern analysis has placed Bethnal Green as the second poorest London parish in 1841, the poorest by 1871.

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Dickens made Bethnal Green the home of Nancy in Oliver Twist (1838).

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The most detailed report on Bethnal Green was published in 1848 by Dr. Hector Gavin, health inspector and lecturer at Charing Cross hospital, who hoped to enlist the rich in ‘the great work of sanitary improvement and social amelioration’. He wrote before development around Victoria Park, when the ‘most respectable’ area was Hackney Road. The rest of the parish, including the area on either side of Green Street, was ‘filthy’, ‘appalling’, and ‘disgusting’. The older districts bordering Spitalfields contained paved streets and larger houses but the former were broken up and the latter overcrowded. Elsewhere roads were unmade, often mere alleys, houses small and without foundations, subdivided and often around unpaved courts. An almost total lack of drainage and sewerage was made worse by the ponds formed by the excavation of brickearth. Pigs and cows in back yards, noxious trades like boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat’s meat, and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and ‘lakes of putrefying night soil’ added to the filth.

Bethnal Green: Building and Social Conditions from 1837 to 1875 | British History Online (british-history.ac.uk)

Bart Jones, an avid Crew researcher in New Zealand, is convinced that this whole France, Hugenot story is nothing but gossip and has no validity at all. I’m about 75% in agreement with him. My hold back in completely rejecting the whole story, is that I believe firmly that within every piece of family gossip, is a thread of truth that has been exaggerated or “bent”. Also, when my DNA analysis came back from both Ancestry and 23andMe, both shows small signs of Northeastern France.

I also think that there’s a misconception that if a surname starts with “de”, that indicates its a French surname. This isn’t the case. The prefix “de” means “of” and is used in French, Spanish, Italian, etc.

For instance, when a woman married and took her husband’s name, she’d add “de” in front of the husband’s surname. Somewhat the same as “Handmaid’s Tale”, where Offred meant “of Fred”. Margaret Attwood could have written “deFred”. But I digress…

“De” was also misused, as common people began to realize they could pass themselves off as aristocracy by added “de” to the beginning of their surname. For example, my name would be Wendy deSmith. Hmmm…. well sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

The surname Fawcett isn’t French, however saying it with a French accent is like mispronouncing Target and Leon’s Furniture. North Americans think they sound higher class.

I was able to find the marriage of William Crew to Susan Sheppard. He was a widower. His first wife was likely Ann Swallows.

Susan’s parents were Charles and Ann, as stated on her baptism in 1798, Tring, Hertfordshire. No mention of Marie deFawcett.

In find it interesting the sequence of events leading up Susan’s death.

• 1861, Susan and William were living with Richard and Rachel (Crew) Pennell.
• 1869, William died.
• April 2, 1871, Susan is a pauper in a “workhouse” (an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment)
• May 1875 Richard and Rachel boarded the S. S. Niger for Canada.
• December 1875 Susan dies.

This post really needs to be read with the post on Miss Rosamond Crocker. There is information in both that are eerily similar.

So there are two Marie’s that escaped France: Marie Theresa (dau. of Marie Antoniette) and Louise Marie (sister of Marie Theresa’s husband). The story of William Pennell assisting in these escapes could very well be the fodder for the Marie deFawcett stories, and somehow the story went from the Pennell side to the Crew side.

And also, the “de” did NOT designate Marie deFawcett as French. It only showed that she was of a culture that used the “de” to either show aristocracy or to show Fawcett was her husband’s surname, not hers. This was a French, Spanish, Portuguese, practice.

Can’t help but wonder, where “Fawcett” came from?

Yesterday (March 26, 2023), while staring at the known ancestry chart of Susan Sheppard, I saw a name I’ve seen before that somehow suddenly looked different. Susan’s husband was Henry Crew. His mother’s name was Elizabeth Foresee (sounds a lot like Fawcett) and Elizabeth had a sister Mary, which brings me to Tale #2.

Tale #2: Duke of Rutland

This is a story that my Aunt Edna told me.

Susan Shepherd had a sister, Mary, who worked for the Duke of Rutland a “Nurse maid and seamstress”. Supposedly, there are memories handed down by Effie Scott, that Eliza recounted visits made by Mary coming to visit her sister Susan by horse and buggy on her days off. Knowing the above description of Bethnal Green, Mary must have found those visits deplorable.

The story goes that the Duke of Rutland was so grateful for Mary’s services, that he willed her a considerable sum of money. Mary remained a spinster, and when she died she left the small fortune to her sister Susan, who, for some reason, never claimed it.

Never wanting to leave a “small fortune” behind, I wrote someone who could look into a database of the employees of the Duke of Rutland during the early 1800’s. It was really no surprize to receive an answer that no such person by the name of Mary Sheppard was ever in the employ of the Duke of Rutland.

However, I did research who would have been the Duke at the time Mary would have been old enough to be a “governess” and would that Duke have needed a governess.

John Manners was the 5th Duke of Rutland. He married Elizabeth Howard who had 10 children and died in 1825, only 5 years after the birth of their last child. John remained a widower until his death at age 79. So there was a need – I just can’t find out who looked after his children after Elizabeth died.

However, the most damning thing about the story is that from Belvoir Castle to Bethnal Green is a 13 hour bike ride or a 2 day walk. Somewhere in between is a buggy ride, and not something one would do on her “day off”.

• John Job Crew BradfieldMarch 14, 2023
  J. J. C. Bradfield is by far our family history’s “claim to fame”. Its unfortunate that he is not known by the Canadian Crew descendants unless they read any family genealogy about the Australian immigration in the mid to late 1800s. I’m not going into the history and stories surrounding J. J. C. Bradfield here because you can simply Google his name or buy or borrow a book about him from the library. I’ll only summarize: John Job Crew Bradfield was the engineer behind the building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the engineer behind creating the specs for… Read more: John Job Crew Bradfield
• BradfieldFebruary 28, 2023
• Pennell, Crew, Bradfield – AustraliaFebruary 28, 2023
  This is a letter sent to Myrtle Connolly (nee Keech), daughter of Jane Keech (nee McNamara), granddaughter of Elizabeth McNamara (nee Pennell) by William Pennell of Brisbane, Australia, April 1, 1973. Brisbane–Queensland, Australia Until near the end of 1859, the State now known as Queensland was part of New South Wales. When Charles and his wife Susan Pennell arrived in Moreton Bay in the little sailing ship “Glentanner”, it was N.S.W. they came to and not Queensland which did not then exist. The Glentanner anchored in Moreton Bay and the passengers were taken by small paddle-boat steamer up… Read more: Pennell, Crew, Bradfield – Australia

When I began researching my family history in the 1980’s, the Pennell and Crew lineage were the first surnames where information was readily available. My Aunt Edna (Ollivier nee Smith) had been gathering information about her maternal heritage for years, before personal computers, printers and photocopiers and the internet, when researching involved a pen and a family group sheet. I visited her several times where she shared copies documents and letters, memories and family gossip. Those visits were great.

However, she only shared what was “respectable” and kept silent on anything that would disparage the family’s reputation. As they say, history is written by the victors, so rarely the complete truth.

With that in mind and in retrospect, it was no surprize that Aunt Edna stuck with Pennell line and the Crew line. Although she had a lot of information about the Smiths, it was all from her memory and she didn’t research the Smiths. I made the assumption that the paternal line was boring while the maternal line was more exotic, taking her to England and Australia.

Aunt Edna even invited an English couple to visit Canada when I was in my teens. She brought them all the way north to Porcupine, where we lived at the time, for an overnight visit. While I sat in the dining room listening to them talk, I had to keep asking my Mom what they were saying – I didn’t understand a word, their cockney accent was so thick. I can’t say for sure who they were, but they must have been George March and Margaret March (nee Sweetlove), as they sent Christmas cards and pictures to my parents for years after, and their daughter, Sandra Tongeman (nee March), corresponds with my sister, Carol. Margaret March’s grandmother was Ann Charlotte Crew, sister of my Great-grandmother, Rachel Sarah Crew.

The story of the Pennells and the Crews is interesting, and I cannot relay the whole story without also adding in two more surnames – Hone and Bradfield.

In the late 1800’s, the patriarchs of all four of these families were brick makers in London, England. As a matter of fact William Crew (Rachel, Susan, Maria and Eliza’s father) was a “highly successful London brickmaker for whom Bradfield, Crew and Pennell had worked.” (The Unreasonable Man: The life and works of J. J. C. Bradfield by Richard Raxworthy, page 13)

Canada – Pennell and Hone and Crew

What we know as fact…

Alice Maria Pennell was my grandmother and her parents were…

Richard William Pennell (b. Apr 2, 1834, Northfleet, Kent, England) was my great-grandfather.

Rachel Sarah Crew (b. Nov 3, 1834, Barnet, Hertfordshire, England) was my great-grandmother.

They were both buried at St. Margaret’s cemetery in Rutherglen, Ontario, in 1916.

Richard was from a large family of about 10 children. Of particular note was Richard’s brother Charles who married Rachel’s sister Susan.

So, of Rachel’s siblings, three sisters are of interest here. Susan who married Charles Pennell, Eliza who married James Hone and Maria who married John Bradfield.

In 1857, John and Maria Bradfield set sail for Australia on the S. S. New Great Britain. Two years later, in 1859, William Henry Crew (Susan’s brother) and Charles & Susan Pennell, escorting William’s 3-year-old daughter Elizabeth, followed the Bradfields on the S. S. Glentanner.

On May 11, 1871, Richard and Rachel Pennell, along with Eliza and James Hone, boarded the S. S. Niger departing Liverpool, and sailed to Quebec City, arriving May 29, 1871.

These families had the same dream – to use their skills and build brickmaking businesses.

Myrtle Connolly writes about the Pennell and Hone families coming to Canada…

They settled in Carleton Place, Ontario, where they established a brickyard. Lumber being the main source of building material and available, therefore was not a demand for brick. The settlers homes were mostly constructed with log timbers, this forcing the Pennells and Hones to take up farming at Rutherglen, where they obtained crown land.

Australia – Pennell and Bradfield and Crew

While being exceptionally innovative, William Crew, Charles Pennell and John Bradfield suffered the same fate. According to The Unreasonable Man: The life and works of J. J. C. Bradfield by Richard Raxworthy (page 13)…

Subsequently, they [Pennell and Bradfield and Crew] went into partnership to found one of the first mechanised brickmaking businesses in Queensland.

And William Pennell writes in 1969 to Myrtle Connolly…

Bradfield thought there would be a great scope for brick making business at Ipswich, some 20,000 miles from Brisbane. They were the first to manufacture machine bricks in the country. Unfortunately, timber was too plentiful and cheap at the time, and the bricks could not compete to any real extent.