Crowson Family in England
Surnames or family names did not come into general use by commoners until the 1400's and early 1500's, when the English kings began insisting upon better records for taxing the people. That meant being able to tell the difference between all the different John's living in the same village. Under the reign of King Henry VIII (ruled 1509-1547), the king convinced Parliament to break with the Roman Catholic church and Protestant reformation swept England. He ordered all parish churches to begin registers of baptisms and burials--one of the best things ever to happen for family historians. However, the king and his court had a very selfish motive for this wonderful act: he wanted more information on his subjects in order to tax them. Many people began to set up "dissenting" groups or new Protestant sects outside the Church of England and many of these new churches did not keep good records on their members (on purpose in some cases).
Our Crowson ancestors appear to have had their origins in the English Midlands, those counties which are located in the central region of the island nation. The huge portion of the early records I and other researchers have found thus far on folks with this (and similar) name are from Lincolnshire (or Lincoln County), one of the nation's largest counties located on the North Sea in the center of England. The next area of concentration of the family name is in the adjoining county of Leicestershire. I say the "family name" because this name is obviously a "place name" or a family name which came from a site with a similar name. In other words, folk living in such a community assumed the name of their hometown.
This region of England was conquered by the Germanic tribe of Saxons who invaded the British isles in the middle 400's, along with smaller numbers of the Germanic tribe of Angles (for whom the nation of England was named by the Roman pope). Lincolnshire is part of what became known as the "Danelaw" because of the huge wave of Viking Danes who began attacking England in the 700's and by the 800's invaded and conquered almost half of England, including London. These Danes settled in Lincoln and intermixed with the Saxons, creating the modern English folk.
By the time the Vikings conquered the Danelaw (named because they WERE the law in that one third region of England), most of England had become Christianized. However, there were still large numbers of Saxons who still practiced the Old Religion of the Germanic folk who worshipped three primary gods: Thunor (called Thor in Scandanavia), the god of weather, maker of rain and protector of crops; Woden, the god of wisdom and knowledge; and Frey. The Danes brought back the Old Religion and all but wiped out the new christian religion in the Danelaw for years to come.
By the 1500's, when the Church of England began keeping the parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, there were already folk using the modern spelling of Crowson living as far afield as London. However, London attracted people from throughout the nation and other urban centers also attracted excess population which the very small farms of old England could not support. Just by studying the large number of records available from the church parish registers, we can surmise that our origins began in Lincoln and the adjoining area of Leicester county.
More coming...
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