John and William Cree of Mansfield

John Cree was identified as a painter in the records of the Manor Court of Mansfield when he surrendered the copyhold of the two shops and a yard which he had inherited under the 1817 will of his father James Cree, carpenter, of Mansfield. The surrender was in trust for the education and maintenance of his two children James and Mary Anne.

Following John's death in 1846, young James came to the Manor Court to claim entry to the property, and it is then that the Staffordshire connection is established, James being described as a carpenter, like his grandfather, of Millmeece near Stone. The other details of his family are based on IGI records which are likely to be incomplete, and so a search of parish registers and Census returns in Staffordshire might well yield further information.

The youngest of the brothers, William Cree, probably took over his parents' farm at Pinxton on the death of his father James in 1817. Certainly he was the residuary beneficiary of the will as well as being executor. Why was the youngest son chosen for this responsibility? Letters from Elizabeth Cree, wife of the William's eldest brother Thomas, that she wrote to her son Joseph in America in the 1850s have nothing good to say for William. She accuses him of cutting his own brother (Thomas) dead in the street and calling in debts which forced the South Normanton family into poverty.