There is much speculation as to the origin of the Grewcock name.
It has been suggested that it was derived from the French word Grue meaning crane (a grey bird with long legs). I have been fortunate to work with Norman Groocock and Allan Grocott on the family tree and in the past few years we have been able to benefit from work carried out by Turi King of Leicester University into the male ‘Y’ chromosome DNA for the many different spellings of our family name.
The results have shown that many of the ‘OO’ and ‘EW’ spellings are in fact identical in 17 markers of our DNA, and Alan Grocott who lives in Australia has traced his name here to the UK, and shares the same number of markers as Norman and myself.
Our records show that the earliest registered name of a Grewcock was William in 1734 at a marriage ceremony at Barwell Parish Church in Leicestershire, UK. We are 100% sure that he came from a Groocock family who lived in Leicestershire and through this link we can trace the family back to about 1545. To date we have been unable to go back any further as parish records were not started until later in that century. Apart from a few Grewcocks descended from a family from the South Shields area, almost all the Grewcocks alive today are from that 1734 union.
Anyone wishing to avail oneself of details of their Grew: Groo: Gro; family history can email for exchange of their information and we will supply details of their roots, free of charge.