FAMILY HISTORY AND STORIES
A "Gross" By Any Other Name!
(
Compiled by JTP AND DEBRA R. POCK - SEPT 94 - This document is about the ancestors of the Selena Gross, the Grandmother of the author and June Parker.)
Selen's maternal and paternal ancestors arrived on the ship GALE at Halifax, N.S. in 1752 from Palantine, Germany. It was to be five generations later that the two lines merged in the marriage of George Robert Gross Jr. and Mary Jane Wagner.
Conrad Krüser was a farmer from Zwienbrucken, age 32, brought his wife Maria Magdalena. Johan Heinrich Wagner, from Palantine, Germany, age 27, a smith by trade brought his wife, Anna Margaret and a daughter, Maria Barbara. This child was one of twelve children born during the voyage. She was the only newborn to survive.
There was obviously a language barrier
between the British authorities and the Germanic families who
were our forebears. The ship's manifest is likely close to
accurate as it was completed in Rotterdam and no doubt written by
German-speaking officials. However, the clerks on duty at the end
of the Gale's voyage were British. It was not even possible for
most of the German-speaking heads of family to spell their name
for a clerk, and unless the manifest could be consulted or the
man was literate enough to sign his own name, the British clerk
wrote what he heard. The guttural German sounds and accents were
often misinterpreted. Through written use, the interpretation of
a family name was accepted until the name went through another
phase of variation, possibly by a church official or census
taker, and underwent still further change.
Bell's Register regarding the name
Krüser states: "The indebtedness list has the surname as
'Krieger'. But while no 'mark' shows on the photostat I think the
nature of the writing shows that the name was written by a clerk
& not by any farmer. Ship's list has 'Kruger'. Judging from
the way the name was represented in Nova Scotia I have no doubt
that it was properly and accurately 'Kruser'."
At Halifax in Sept. and Oct. 1752 Conrad
and Magdalena Kruzer were recorded on the Victualer List. In
Feb.-April 1773 Conrad and Magdalena Krüser reappeared. At
Lunenburg in Dec. 1753 COENRAED CREUZER participated in the
return of arms. A 1753 allotment list gives CONRAED CRUSER a 30
acre farm lot, Middle Range, A-3. In July 1754 CONRAD GRIESER
received a Division, G-lO, with a "house'. In a live-stock
distribution in 1754 CONRAD KRUSER and a partner, Geo. Hohl
received Lot No. 177 - 5 sheep, 1 sow and 1 goat.
In 1755 Conrad and Magdalena received
their victuals in their own name, Krüser. However, when George
Michael was baptized on 18 Jan. 1756, Conrad and Maria Marqt
Cruser were credited as parents. The surname was correctly
recorded as Krüser through 1756 and 1757 on the Victualer's List,
but appeared as Conrad Cruser for the Cattle Expedition. (This
was a round-up of cattle at Grand Pre, left behind by the fleeing
Arcadians when the British displaced the French.)
Conrad Crueser was registered for a Town
Lot in 1760 (Strashurger's Piv. G-10.) and in the same year a 30
acre lot (South,D-5) to Conrad Crieser. The same version of
Conrad's name, Crieser was applied to the Second Drawing, 7 Nov.
1763 for 300 acre lots (Third Division D-14).
The (Dutch) Reformed Church Register
buries Conrad cruser in 1806, age 81.
Creaser seems to have been the accepted
form of the name Krüser through the next three generations, and
even our fifth generation grandfather, whom we know as George
Robert Gross Jr., has his birth record under the name of Creaser.
He, however, consistently used the name Gross throughout his
lifetime, not interchangeably as did his father.
As the families moved down the coast and
away from their German speaking neighbors, even forgetting that
they themselves were "German", the rolling guttural
"Krus" and the lightly accented "er" of
Krüser or even Creaser, became Gross. Had the name-intent
actually been Gross, it would have been pronounced Gross, not
with the short "o" that this variation adopted.
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