The CREE name in Ireland derives from more than one source. However we believe that most of the Irish lines originally came from Scotland, some in the Seventeenth Century Ulster Plantation and other in the Nineteenth Century. One line that of County Clare, is probably indigenously Irish. Isolated occurrences of the name in the south of the country may be variations of the Irish surname Creagh.

County Clare

This line is thought to derive from the old Irish surname CREAGH which was common in County Clare in the seventeenth century. Records show that a John Creagh was a merchant in Ennis, the county town of that county in the latter part of that century. He may or may not be the same person as John Cree of Ennis, who was stated by John McMahon in 1786 to be his maternal grandfather. John McMahon changed his name to Cree and founded a line that is now represented by a Cree family in Dorset, England. See the Co Clare line

County Down

The numerous Cree families in County Down and, more recently, neighbouring counties, have a strong claim to be descended from Crees who came from Scotland to settle in County Down as part of the Montgomery-Hamilton Plantation of the early seventeenth century. There are at present several lines in the area and we have not yet found connections between them. Members later migrated to many parts of the world, and one branch was to be found for a time in County Cork. See the Co Down lines

County Limerick

James Cree, a member of the Glasgow Cree merchant family, settled in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick in the 1820s and possibly as early as 1807.

County Louth

William Brown Cree was descended from the Cree nurserymen of Biggar, Lanarkshire. In 1890 he was posted as an exciseman to Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland, where he died and where several of his children were married.

Other occurrences

There's a sprinkling of Cree surnames through the southern and western parts of Ireland. We think these are so thinly spread that they must derive as a variation of another name, of which the most likely is Creagh, a well known name of Counties Cork and Limerick. These occurrences are found as early as the 1640s. An understanding of the history of the period, the Cromwellian suppression, the penal laws against Catholics and the rebellion against English rule, is probably important for an understanding of a possible relationship of the Cree and Creagh surnames. See the page on County Clare in the Seventeenth Century.