Chew

Chew One-Name Study

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Study details

Study: Chew **** available for adoption ****

Variants: Cheu, Chewe, Chue

Category: 2 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way, but currently in some countries only.

Website: chews.tribalpages.com

Contact: Prof Geoff Chew

About the study

This study concerns the Chew surname worldwide, though mainly excluding the name of Chinese origin whose history is (at least until recent times) quite separate.

Variant names

Variants of the name include Chewe, Chue, Cheu, Chow; I have no firm evidence that 'Tew' is a variant of the same name, but have an open mind on the subject.

Name origin

The origin of the name is unknown. North American genealogies tend to favour the speculation (due to Robert L. Chew and earlier writers, see below) that it originated as Cheux in Normandy and was introduced to England under William the Conqueror. There may be a link (also suggested by Robert L. Chew and others) with the geographical name Chew (River Chew, Chew Valley, Chew Stoke, etc - places near Bristol and other places in Lancashire), although it is not clear that the name originated there, nor is the origin of the geographical names clear. Other origins have also been suggested.

Historical occurrences of the name

Distinguished bearers of the Chew name include:
(1) William CHEW (d. March 1712/13), distiller of London and founder of Chew's Foundation, Dunstable (see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=004-x277&cid=0#0)
(2) Benjamin CHEW (1722-1810), American jurist and politician (monograph by B. A. Konkle, _Benjamin Chew, 1722-1810: Head of the Pennsylvania Judiciary System under Colony and Commonwealth_, 1932, and article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_)
(3) Ada Nield CHEW (1870-1945), English labour organizer, suffragist and pacifist (biography by her daughter, Doris Nield Chew, _Ada Nield Chew_, 1982, and article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_)
(4) Alfred Ambrose Chew LEETE (1882-1933), English artist, son of John Alfred LEETE and Harriet Eliza CHEW, most famous for his Lord Kitchener propaganda poster for First World War recruitment (described as the 'best and most efficient of British posters'), and his characteristic comic drawings (see article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_)
(5) Geoffrey Foucar CHEW (b. 5 June 1924), American theoretical physicist, developer of the so-called 'bootstrap theory' (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Chew )

Distribution of the name

In Britain, the name has historically been concentrated mainly in England in the north-west (Lancashire, Yorkshire) and west (Gloucestershire), though it is found from the 16th century at least also in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and London, and from the 18th and 19th centuries in Northamptonshire and in Birmingham. Since the 17th century, with the arrival of a John Chew at Cape Cod in 1622, there have been Chews in North America; since the 18th century there have been Chews of British origin in India; and the name is found also elsewhere in the English-speaking world from the 19th century onwards.

Data

My data is held principally on gedcom files, and their content is mainly British, reflecting material from UK censuses, the General Register Office indexes, parish records, etc, which I have assembled and verified (the intention being to verify all such data eventually). I do have, at second hand, gedcom files with North American data, most of which seem to be based on the book by Robert L. Chew, _Genealogy of the Chew Family_ (Woodbury, NJ: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1982 and later edns, 488 pp). Some of this material is fairly speculative, and will eventually require critical verification; Chew based his book itself avowedly on earlier local publications, whose content he admits to adopting without verifying it.

Links

(1) My own pages, very provisional:
http://chews.tribalpages.com
(2) For Chews in England, see particularly:
http://www.rogerthomas.co.uk/dsp_index2827d.html?familyName=Chew
(3) For the Chews in North America, there are several websites, notably including:
http://home.poslfit.com/cgi-bin/genea2.pl?10001 ( J. J. Chew's pages, Toronto, with further links, some unfortunately out of date)
http://www.ronulrich.com/ulrich/CHEW-tree.html (Ron Ulrich)
https://wc.rootsweb.com/trees/233243/I1/-/individual (Tim Chew, a vast file admitting that 'not all information has been verified')
(4) Chew Rootsweb Message Board:
https://www.ancestry.com/boards/surnames.chew
(5) Chew Family Genealogy Forum (content mainly North American):
http://genforum.genealogy.com/chew/
(6) Online PDF of an early American Chew genealogy, Lawrence Buckley Thomas, _Pedigrees of Thomas, Chew, and Lawrance, A West River Regester, and Genealogical Notes_ (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1883):
http://ia331203.us.archive.org/3/items/pedigreesofthoma00byuthom/pedigreesofthoma00byuthom.pdf

(7) William A. Abram, _A History of Blackburn, Town and Parish_ (Blackburn, Lancs., England, 1877), containing an extensive appendix with information about the Lancashire Chews and available online: https://archive.org/details/historyofblackbu00abrauoft

Contact Details

Prof Geoff Chew

General Search Results

Occurrences of the surname Chew in the Guild Indexes

(Click on the number to view the search results in each index. Indexes marked by * are only accessible by logged in Guild members.)

Global Marriages (public) 4016
Global Marriages (members)* 4173
Inscriptions Index 3
Modern Newspaper Index 2
Probate Index* 65
Datastores (public) 1
Datastores (members)* 3
Study materials for the study Chew* 3

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