Cree families at Newark, Nottinghamshire

This map shows the location of Crees Lane, Farndon, where the present Cree's House is situated. We think the first Cree family, that of Joshua and Sarah Cree who married in Newark in 1796 and definitely lived in Farndon, probably lived in Crees Lane and quite possibly on the site of Cree's House. The Roman road called the Fosse Way runs in a straight line from Leicester through Newark to Lincoln and is here shown as Fosse Rd and Farndon road. The parish boundary between Newark and Farndon is just north-east of Crees Lane. The bypass, bridge over the Trent and roundabout were opened in 1992.

Joshua Cree was the fifth and youngest surviving son of William and Gertrude Cree of Clowne. His father was the most junior Cree of his generation (as the son of a youngest son) so Joshua was the most junior of twenty-two Cree great-grandchildren of the first James Cree of Derbyshire. No wonder he left home, but why he went to Newark we shall probably never know. We simply find that he married Sarah Hand of Balderton in 1796 and that they settled in Farndon, just outside Newark, where Joshua was joint sub-tenant of a copyhold croft.

They baptised ten children at Farndon parish church, and at the last baptism in 1832 Joshua was described as a waterman. This is significant because the boatman tradition has carried on amongst the Newark Crees into living memory, passing through five generations down to Horace Cree (1913-1990) who was brought up on the Trent river barges, although he himself became a Chief Fire Officer.

The eldest and youngest sons of Joshua and Sarah Cree, Isaac and James, moved to South Muskham, an adjoining parish also on the Trent in close proximity to each other, which must have caused some confusion of generations as Isaac was twenty-four years older than James. No present-day descendants are known about.

Joseph, the second son, married Sarah Cox of Balderton and had three children, who probably led wretched lives in and out of poverty. After Joseph died, Sarah had three illegitimate children, the last two by Gervase Harris whom she later married. However they bore the name Cree (though strictly they had no Cree ancestry and were recorded as Harris in one Census) and William was the one who raised himself up in the world and passed the Cree name on to future generations including the present-day Crees of Laxton.

William Cree, the third son of Joshua and Sarah, married Mary Scott of Banbury and they had four daughters.

The fourth son, John Cree, was a boatman and his first wife was called Ellen. They had three children, the first of which Mary Ann, has known descendants in Ilkeston. Elisabeth Naylor has done much work on Nottinghamshire Census returns to elucidate the complex genealogy of the Newark Crees. John and Ellen's third child John was a railway labourer and was recorded as being deaf in the 1851 Census. Ellen is thought to have died in 1853 and John remarried and had seven more children, the last Charles, at the age of sixty.

The fifth son Francis was also a waterman. He married Mary King, the daughter of a Newark publican and they had nine children. This seems to be the family that stayed longest in Farndon, presumably at the house still named Cree House in Crees Lane.

Of his four sons William and Francis worked in malting, William becoming a foreman maltster with three sons in malting. Two other sons of Francis and Mary, Watkin and John, became ironmoulders (foundry workers). Three of the four sons have Cree descendants living in Newark today. The fourth had a daughter Florrie who lived as a recluse in Crees House, Farndon, for nearly sixty years after being widowed in World War I.

We believe that Samantha Cree born in Nottingham in 1985 is a great-great-granddaughter of Bill Cree. He in turn was a great-great-grandson of Joshua and Sarah Cree. Joshua was a great-great-grandson of Alexander Mackree and Anna Hancock. So Samantha is the thirteenth generation of our Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire CREE TREES!

Frances Cree was the second of the four daughters of Joshua and Sarah Cree. It is quite clear from Census returns that her seven children were all called Cree. She herself was described as a lace hand, housekeeper, charwoman and domestic servant in four successive censuses from 1851 to 1881. She was also described as a widow, which is patently untrue as she never changed her name from Cree. Her eldest son Joseph Cree, at his wedding to Jane Dakin in 1832, gave his father's name as William Hitchcock. Whether William was the father of Frances's other children we do not know. Joseph and Jane were the probable purchasers of a family Bible from which many records of his descendants derive.

Their first three sons all had large families, which lack of space forces us to show on three separate lines of the chart. The first son Joseph moved to Leicester as a young man, reputedly after an argument with his father, and became a builder. His descendants live in Leicester now. Tommy and George both became boatmen and founded large dynasties of boatmen, known as Tommy's family and George's family to many Newark Crees of today. The fourth son William probably moved to Nottingham and may have descendants in Lincolnshire.

James Cree, Joshua and Sarah's sixth and last son and the tenth of their children, moved to South Muskham and we know of no descendants beyond their family of nine children.

Altogether Joshua and Sarah Cree had fifty-one Cree grandchildren and forty-six Cree great-grandchildren. In the next generation there were fifty-seven children with the name Cree.

A more detailed article on the Newark Crees was published in Cree News in three parts and is available for download as a PDF file (300 kbyte).