Definition of "grewsome"

It was rather a grewsome scene.

1895, Henry Seton Merriman, The Sowers‎

True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine—but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “The Battle of the Sand-belt”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, page 560

His voice was hoarse and his unkempt head only added to its grewsome quality.

1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie‎

And various grewsome objects, a card case of human skin, and the twisted scarf used by a strangler.

1909, Cleveland Moffett, chapter 19, in Through the Wall‎

I sprang back, giving utterance to a cry, which brought Watkins to me, and the two of us stared at the grewsome object and then about into the wavering shadows.

1918, Randall Parrish, Wolves of the Sea‎