William Cree and Sarah Woodhead (m 1778) of Clowne and Worksop

William Cree of Clowne married Sarah Woodhead, a member of one of the best-known families of the Clowne district. The baptismal records of their eight children show that the family moved in about 1781 from Clowne to Market Warsop just a few miles away across the Nottinghamshire border, and then, in about 1789, a few miles north to Worksop, possibly following William's brother Francis who had settled there in 1786. The 1841 Census tells us that William, who was then 80 years old, was a hatter, as was his son Joseph who was then living with him.

William and Sarah Cree had three sons who survived to adulthood and all married in Worksop. John married Jane Taylor and they had seven children at Southwell, moving then to Mansfield, where they were all involved in the textile industry, mostly as factory labourers. Their eldest son John married Hannah Warren but no present descendants are known. Hannah and her unmarried sister-in-law seem likely to be the Hannah and Jane Cree recorded in New York immigration records for 1864. John and Jane Cree's fifth child William became the manager of a lace factory, and their sixth, John, became a book-keeper. Both these two sons had large families with Cree descendants now (1991) living in Bury, Lancashire (descended from Edwin Cree); Burton, Staffordshire (from Alfred Leonard); Leicester (from Roger); and Worcestershire (from John Butler Cree).

William, the second son of William and Sarah Cree, married Mary Chapel and he and his children and grandchildren stayed in Worksop as whitesmiths and gasfitters.

The last son, Joseph, was described in the 1851 Census as a pauper living in the Worksop Union Workhouse. He died two years later at the age of fifty-seven. The 1840s and 1850s were bad times.