What happened afterwards?

1. America

We don't know whether Mary Cree Hodsdon accompanied Joe Cree to Iowa. Maybe she went back earlier. We know that Joe made it to Iowa, as he died there on 6th November 1870, just two months after the last letter which Mary's husband Chris had written to her.

Chris and Mary and their descendants have been charted by two of their grandchildren, Inez Gilmore Snell and Floyd Hodsdon. In 1964, Inez wrote a short account called "Family of Christopher Wishart Hodsdon."

C W Hodsdon married Mary Martha Cree on May 17, 1862. They lived at Stevens Point where their oldest children were born and were baptized Episcopalians... They moved to Butler County, Iowa, in 1871 where three girls were born. He farmed from 1871-1893, then lived in Clarksville 1893-1895. After running a restaurant in Shell Rock 1895-1908 he retired but continued to live there until 1916 at which time both [he and Mary] passed away.

Inez Gilmore Snell also tells us a little about Joe and Mary Cree's other children:

Elizabeth married Hiram Scott and lived in Fremont township where she died June 16, 1870 from childbirth...

Inez also recalled the following:

Sarah came to Iowa with them [Elizabeth and Hiram Scott]. She married a Mr. Taylor, who didn't live very long. and later a widower, Joseph Cannon, with several children and moved to Nebraska. After Mr. Cannon's death my mother and Aunt Annie [children of Chris and Mary Hodsdon] both wrote her and invited her to be with them.

These offers she accepted and lived with each as she wished. While I was attending high school a step grandson invited her to make her home with him which she did.

However, she was not very happy and became ill. Grandma went to Omaha and brought her back to Shellrock where she passed away a few months later.

That was in 1907.

Inez continued:

Grandmother [Mary Cree Hodsdon] had the tombstones of her father [Joe] and sister, Elizabeth, moved from the old Clarksville cemetery to the Lynnwood cemetery where Aunt Sarah is also buried.

Floyd has an old picture of Haber and Elizabeth Cree, probably a brother and sister of Joseph Cree. Elizabeth married a John Medhurst of Winona, Minn.

Inez must mean Eliza when she writes Elizabeth in this last paragraph, forgetting perhaps that Lizzie was really Elizabeth.

Ruth later told me that the picture was in fact a watercolor and someone had tried to touch it up but the colours had run and the picture was ruined.

Haber Cree was Joe and Mary's only son. It seems the family lost touch with him after Joe's death in 1870. We know from US Government records that he served in the Civil Way and on 26 July 1890 was receiving a Civil War Pension. The file shows that he had served as a private in 15th and 50th New York Engineers of the Union Army. The pension was an Invalid Pension and the record is filed under the State of Missouri.

More recently we have found from US Census records that in 1860 Haber was living in Seneca Falls, NY, quite near to his father Joe, with a wife Lucretia and children, John A Cree aged three and Sarah M Cree aged one. In 1910 he was a widower living in Rosedale, Wyandotte County, Kansas. So there is still a chance there were Cree descendants.

Chris and Mary Hodsdon's six children were:
Lewis Allen Hodsdon (1863-1913)
  m. Minnie Julia McConnell (1867-1934);
Martha Jane (1865-1915)
  m. Baxter Gilmore;
Annie (1868-1947)
  m. Afton Gilmore;
Kate (1875-99);
Lucy (1877-91);
Margaret (1878-1936)
  m. Jacob F. Jacobsen.

Perhaps there were seven children if Henry (mentioned in Letter 10) was also theirs. It is mainly a Hodsdon story so is not strictly relevant to this Cree web site.

However we will summarise briefly. Lewis Hodsdon and Minnie McConnell Hodsdon had six children in this birth order:
  Floyd Hodsdon 1890-1969
  Tracy Hodsdon 1894-1938
  Helen Hodsdon Leavitt 1895-1973
  Dorothea Hodsdon 1898-1955
  Lowell Hodsdon 1901-1954
  Ruth Hodsdon Langenheim 1910-1996

Floyd did much research into Hodsdon genealogy; Helen, married Edward Leavitt and their son, also Ed, came to England searching for his roots in 1990, and has encouraged me to publish the letters; Ruth gave me substantial help and encouraged me to tell this story.

A daughter of Ruth Hodsdon Langenheim (1910-1996), Ellen Lawson, made the first transcripts of some of the letters and arranged for copies to be deposited in Manchester Public Library in England.

Chris and Mary's second child, Martha Jane, married Baxter Gilmore (1861-1955) and they had six children, of whom Inez was the second. Annie married Afton Gilmore (1865-1942) and Kate married Jacob Jacobsen (1878- ).

The grave of Joseph Haber Cree in Clarksville, Iowa. On another face are the names Elizabeth Cree Scott (1842-1870) and Sarah Cree Cannon (1840-1907).

2. England

What happened to the Joseph's relatives in England who wrote so eloquently about their hard lives, their sadness at his departure and their joy at his success?

As we have seen from the letters, Joe's sister Rebecca had moved from Derbyshire to Manchester where she made a living as an upholsterer. By 1853 their parents Thomas and Elizebeth had joined her there. Thomas Cree, who in 1848 had been "a poor old man & goes down the hill very fast" when aged 70, survived another six years and died in his native Pinxton, Derbyshire, in October 1854. Elizebeth, who was eight years younger than him, died in Manchester, aged 76, but was also buried in Pinxton churchyard.

Rebecca Cree finally married in 1864. Her husband, Emanuel Alderson, was a sadler and they went to live at the Punch Bowl Inn at Feetham in the Yorkshire Dales. One feels that, after her hard times, she attained some degree of comfort in this country hostelry.

In the 1881 Census she was described as a landlady while her husband was a sadler and innkeeper. She died in 1891 aged 70.

We have already mentioned Joe's sister Hannah Cree (in Letter 3) who had married Thomas Frisby and died in 1842. Their son Will was brought up by Thomas and Elizebeth Cree, his grandparents. I have now discovered (thanks to Tim Robb, a descendant) that Thomas and Hannah Frisby had eight children and 17 grandchildren. Thomas also had a daughter Hannah (mentioned though not named in Letter 8) with his second wife Elizabeth Cree.

The person of most interest from the perspective of the Cree One-Name Study is Joseph and Rebecca's brother William, whom she mentions in Letter 6. William and his wife Charlotte had moved to live near Rebecca in Manchester. They eventually had seven children of whom four were boys. One of them, born in 1863, was named Joseph Haber Cree! And he has a Cree grandson living in Manchester today.