Another mystery solvedTividale in Staffordshire is now part of the Black Country urban industrial sprawl but in the nineteenth century it was a hamlet outsde Dudley. It was already becoming industrialised with an ironworks and was located near an important junction in the canal network. There is still at least one Cree family in Tividale today (2014) but it was over twenty years ago that Rita Cree wrote to me about her ancestry. I was not able to link her with any of the major lines and wrote the brief item on the right in Cree News. That's how the situation remained until 2014.
The major breakthrough in the family history of this Cree line was made in November 2014 when, out of the blue, the email on the right arrived from Richard Price. His mention of Rowley Regis in Staffordshire, England, stirred an old corner of my memory as I knew that Tividale was nearby - in fact it was in the parish of Rowley Regis. To start at the begining, we knew from the 1851 Census of a Hellen (or Ellen) Cree born in 1829 or 1830 in Dunfermline, Fife in Scotland. Her parents were David Cree and Mary Hutchison, and David was probably descended from the family of five brothers who were glovers in Perth and burgesses of that burgh in the early years of the seventeenth century. David Cree was a weaver and died at the age of 39 when Hellen was just four or five years old. In 1851 she was 21 and living in New Row, Dunfermine, near the centre of the town. She was a hand-loom damask weaver as were her elder brother John, and her younger siblings Mary and Esabella. They were all still living at home with their mother Mary now aged 50. The Census also shows a child called John Cree described as Mary's grandaughter. We now know, thanks to Richard Price's inspired deduction, that granddaughter was the correct description and it was the name John that was incorrect - it should have been Joanna. She was Hellen's illegitimate daughter. Joanna Cree is the key to how the name Cree came to Tividale in Staffordshire. In 1854 her mother Ellen married Thomas Downs, an ironworker who had moved to Dunfermline having been born in Tipton, Staffordshire, not far from Tividale. He was only 18 - about seven years her junior. About two years later they had a son Thomas. The family, including Ellen's daughter Joanna Cree who was now about nine years old, then moved from Dunfermline to Tividale where Thomas and Ellen had another son John, in about 1858. On the Census return for April 1861 Joanna was given her step-father's surname, Downs, along with with her two half-brothers, Thomas and John Downs, aged 4 and 2. Joanna, like them, was described as Thomas's daughter. Significantly her age was not recorded. Thomas was now a shingler, so he would have worked with an iron puddler, manipulating puddled balls of iron on an anvil, which was hard and dangerous work. Skipping on twenty years to 1881 (as we have not found found them in the 1871 Census) the family is still in Tividale. Joanna is aged 32 and still living at home with Thomas and Ellen. Thomas is now an iron puddler. Three children, John, William and Lizzie Downs are aged 10, 7 and 3 respectively and described as Thomas's children. Joanna too is still named as Joanna Downs. She has another son David Cree that year. The question arises as to who the father is, if indeed the four children John, William, Lizzie and David, had the same father. The spacing of their births (1871, 1873, 1877, 1881) is typical for a stable relationship (with possible unrecorded births or stillbirths in 1875 and 1879). The evidence we have on this question consists of the Census returns for the years 1881, 1891 and 1901. Richard Price has had sight of the birth certificates of John and Elzabeth. On both cetificates the place for the father's name is blank and both children have the surname Cree. We also have entries in the death indexes for the deaths of Thomas, Joanna and Ellen. As a general principle I would always recommend accepting at face value the evidence of contemporary documents. To regard their evidence as false is a last resort to be adopted only in the face of stronger conflicting evidence. The only piece of Census information that we cannot easily accept is that Joanna was Thomas Downs' daughter. She was actually aged 32 in 1881 when he was 44, so she was born when he was 12 years old. As we have seen, the three children were shown as Thomas's children in 1881. It is easy to regard this as an error, of a type that is not unknown in census records - Joanna was shown as Thomas's daughter and her three children were listed below her. So the description sons and daughter could conceivably mean that they were her children, even though the census form clearly heads that column "Relation to Head of Family." Ten years later however, this explanation can no longer hold. We know that by the time of the 1891 Census, their mother Joanna had died. There were now four children and they were still clearly shown as Thomas's children. In 1892 Thomas himself died. In 1901 two of Joanna's four children, John and David, the eldest and the youngest, were recorded as still being at the family home. The Head of Family was now Joanna's mother Ellen. Aged 31 and 19 they were now recorded with the surname Cree and were described as grandsons. There is no conflict of evidence in these records and the evidence is clear and unambiguous. Shocking as it may seem, Thomas Downs, Joanna's step-father, was the father of her children. The only ambiguity is that, while Thomas was alive, the chidren were shown in the Census records with his surname Downs. But this was not unusual since they were being described as his children. If we visualise the situation in the household in about 1870, we will see that Thomas Downs was now aged about 34. His wife Ellen was 41 and their three children were now aged 11 to 14. They has not had a child now for about ten years. In Thomas's eyes Ellen may no longer have been the attractive 23-year-old he fell in love with and married back in Dunfermline. Also in the house was Ellen's daughter Joanna who was now about 22 herself. Thomas may have seen in his step-daughter the features and attractiveness that he had seen in her mother ten years earlier. Living in daily proximity may have increased her attractiveness to him. On her part she may have been flattered by his attentions. Eventually, I am suggesting, Thomas Downs and Joanna Cree could resist each other no more. If indeed their relationship was as I am suggesting and if it continued over the next ten years or more, the situation must have been at least tolerated by Thomas's wife, Joanna's mother, Ellen. She would have felt terribly divided loyalties: to the man who was still after all her husband and the sole breadwinner of the household; to the three children she had had with him now entering adolescence; to her eldest daughter Joanna, and as time went on to the growing number of children of Thomas and Joanna. These four, John, William, Lizzie and David, were, after all, her grandchildren. She must have felt terribly conflicted and perhaps also trapped in the situation. If Thomas was not the father of Joanna's children, she certainly had a relationship with someone over that period. If it was not Thomas, it was someone who left no trace in the census or in other records that we have seen. When the children were registered the space for "Father's name" was left blank, a frequent occurrence when children were illegitimate. The deaths of Joanna in 1886 and Thomas in 1892 left them as orphans, the youngest, David being only eleven years old. Their grandmother Ellen, Joanna's mother, had little choice but to take on the parenting role. According to the custom of the period, Joanna, being illegitimate should have taken her mother's maiden surname of Cree, and Joanna's children, also being illegitimate, should have taken the same name. This they finally did after Thomas Downs' death and the surname Cree has survived in Tividale ever since. By 1901 both Joanna and her step-father Thomas have died. Ellen Downs is the Head of Household, a widow aged 70. She is now living with three grandsons all born in Rowley Regis: John Cree aged 31, a canal boatman; David Cree, 19, a brickworks labourer and Thomas Law, 19, a canal boatman. The first two of these are Joanna's children. I conjecture that Joanna and her children were only listed as Downs at the earlier Censuses to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy falling on her children. In the end the children took the surname Cree, and William and David Cree passed it on to the next generation so that it survives in Tividale to this day. |
Unconnected - so far!Rita Cree of Tividale and George Cree of Stourbridge (both in WEST MIDLANDS) wrote independently and turn out to be first cousins. They cannot progress their tree beyond grandparents David and Elizabeth Cree, who were probably born in STAFFORDSHIRE around the 1880s. Can anyone help? From CREE NEWS 2, page 4, April 1991 Email from Richard Price to Trevor Cree and Mike Spathaky, 24 November 2014:
Hi Trevor/Mike
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