Creer from the Isle of Man - Family history

www.ballacreer.com

Creer One Name Study

When I started off researching my own Creer family history nearly 10 years ago, all I knew was that my family name Creer came from the Isle of Man - and nothing more. I am an only child, my parents died over 30 years ago and I never knew my grandparents. My father Herbert James Creer was born in Birkenhead Cheshire in 1903 several years after my grandfather John James Creer came over from Douglas in the Isle of Man to Cheshire, to marry and to settle.

My research established several generations further back for my Creer line, and relatively quickly I reached a dead end with the identity of my ggg grandfather John Creer who married Sarah Taggart in the parish of Malew in the Isle of Man in 1813. However hard I tried, I was unable to find any evidence to show who the parents might be of this John Creer.

So I then started to assemble the family trees of other Creer families living around this time, in order to see if I could identify the parentage of my John Creer by eliminating all the other possible parents in Creer families at this time and in this area. At this time also I set up this website (www.ballacreer.com) to act as a means of gathering and sharing Creer family history information with other Creer family descendants, and to help me in my task.

I have now developed a large database of Creer family history information, which I am striving to make the main single repository for Creer family history - to be at the disposal of anybody researching their own Creer family history. In genealogical circles this type of exercise is known as a One Name Study - and I have joined the UK-based organisation, the Guild of One Name Studies (www.one-name.org), in order to assist me in ensuring that the appropriate professional standards are adopted and employed in the work I do. The description of the Creer One Name Study can be found here

The extent of the research I have been working to collect and collate as much Creer family history information as I am able, from as wide a range of sources as possible - and to build a database which

Currently the database contains ca 20,000 records of birth, marriage and deaths covering the period from 1600-2006. This includes at present all the Creers in:-

The 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 Censuses for England, Wales. Scotland and the Isle of Man
Most of the US censuses
The IOM Parish Christening, marriage and burial register entries for Creer
All the IOM graveyard memorial inscriptions for Creer
All the Creer birth, marriage and death certificate references from the English General Records Office - indexed by registration district and Year/Quarter - 1837-2007 This means that if anyone researching their Creer family in England or Wales wishes to obtain a copy of the appropriate birth, marriage or death certificate - then I can provide the GRO reference for this certificate directly without them having to spend time searching through the GRO films and fiches held in various libraries and the FRC in London. Please feel free to contact me if you think I can help.
All the Manx General Registry Birth, marriage and death index entries for Creers on the IOM from about 1880 until the present.
The Mormon Church International Genealogy Index - IGI - which contains the surviving christening marriage and burial records transcribed from the Manx Parish Church registers dating from ca 1630
US Social Security Death Index

In addition I have collected a number of Creer family trees from a variety of sources and am progressively cross-referencing these trees against the records in the database. If anyone wishes to provide me with their own Creer family data I would be pleased to include this - as well as being very willing to look within this body of data to search for any missing or lost Creer relatives for anyone.

Please contact me John Creer if you wish to me to search the database or you wish to contribute to it.

Member of the Guild of One-Name Studies