On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:59:31 +0000 (UTC), Dennis Ahern <ahern@world.std.com> wrote: >In soc.genealogy.ireland Phil C. <philstoxicwaste@fsmail.net> wrote: >... >: Frederick Nicholls Crouch was English but enjoyed some minor celebrity >: as a "lecturer on Irish minstrelsy" - that's his primary description >: on his lithographed portrait of ca1840 in the British Museum. This >... >: Do you recall ever coming across any reference to him at all in Irish >: newspapers? Thanks for any help. > >By entering "Crouch" in the search engine of the IrelandOldNews website I >found two pages, one of which quotes the Waterford Press in the Cork >Examiner of a Miss Hickie performing pieces by "Bellini, Crouch, Rossini, >Thalberg and Czerinay" http://www.irelandoldnews.com/Cork/1847/SEP.html > >The other reference is a death notice for James Crouch, at Lisburn, 1764 >http://www.irelandoldnews.com/Dublin/1764/FEB.html Thanks for response. Those are all I could see on the website. The composer mentioned is probably him but his name turned up on a lot of standard concert programmes - the very absence of other refs on sources so far catalogued on the site doesn't suggest he was much publicised in Ireland itself. Nor have I found any hint of Irish ancestry. >I suggest that you search an index to The Times, either in print or >online, for Frederick Nicholls Crouch and if any of them mention his >touring in Ireland, look for contemporary reports or reviews in local >or national Irish papers. I've already looked at the Times and found nothing about Ireland - though there's plenty of juicy stuff about him - nor in any other source I've seen. It always remains possible that some reference will turn up - especially as his name has appeared in various inaccurate versions. I don't want to be categorical in a final "definitive" draft but I think I can reasonably say that it seems unlikely that he ever actually visited Ireland in his life in spite of his connection to "Irish" music. His name still appears on compilations of Irish songs. I'm not even sure the claim was his. His memoirs appeared when he was in his late 70s and had almost illegible handwriting. I suspect he gave a rambling interview which was then edited and re-written to match the needs of the journal - it would explain a lot. It makes it even harder to sort the wheat from the chaff in producing a final version while my eyesight can still cope. -- Phil C.