TALES FROM DUNNING, PERTHSHIRE

This little town is the focus of interest of several CREE FHS members. John Scott Cree, Colin Cree and Myra Dinsdale are descendants of Daniel Cree and Elizabeth McGregor who married there in 1813. Daniel was bom in Dunning in 1790, the youngest of seven children of James Cree and Christian Graeme. James and Christian were married at nearby Auchterarder, and it has been suggested that James was from Methven a few miles north. However there was a Cree marriage in Dunning as early as 1734, and in 1775 David Cree married Jane Winton there and started a family.

There seems to have been a continuous presence of Crees in Dunning from the 1770s to today, but the it does seem that the different families are not closely related. CREE Fl-IS member Georgie Cree lives in Dunning but her father, James Smith Cree (1897- 1950) was from Perth. She has discovered a plan of the graveyard of St Serf‘s Church at Dunning which shows a J CREE. This would appear to mark the 1875 burial plot of Janet Cree the eldest sister of Daniel Cree. Janet married a John Campbell who died in 1832 but she followed the general Scottish practice of keeping her maiden surname "until death".

Myra Dinsdale was in Dunning and met up with Georgie. She found a further Cree gravestone in the churchyard of St Serfs, Dunning, that of Charles Laing d 1952 aged 82, his wife Janet Cree d 1960 aged 88 and their daughter Ann who died in infancy. She also did some research on Census returns for Dunning, showing two Cree families in the village in 1841.

John Scott Cree, has also been in touch with Georgie Cree and it is through him that I received an extract from a family Bible. This starts:

My wife Isabella Paterson was the oldest daughter of James Paterson and Catherine Cree. She was born at the Raw or Row in the parish of Dunning and county of Perth. Her father and mother rented a little place from Mr Stewart who was then laird of Boghall, Steelend, Long Drum and the Raws. The Raw was a little place on the east side of Boghall farm... where my wife herded her father's cows and horse... She went to Forteviot School and when she was at school she was playing at a game called Beddy, that is hopping on one foat and she hurt her leg then, and it became a white swelling as it is termed by doctors, and the doctors tried all they could for to heal it but it was all in vain and at last they agreed to cut it off. But she would not submit to them, and the doctors were very angry at her. This was about the time when her father flitted out of the Raws and came to the Newton of Pitcairns and after some time there my mother Catherine Salmon had a friend which healed the leg with herbs and butter and several other things. There was 24 different herbs they were all on a paper and Mrs Marrow meade-wie got the loan of it - the paper and it was never got back again...

My wife Isabella Paterson lived till she was fifty-seven years and six months. She was born on a Hansel Monday or Rathe Tuesday and died on the evening of the 24th June about 20 minutes before nine o'clock 1862...

James Duncan: This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Georgie Cree has also sent John S Cree a booklet entitled "A Village of crossroads and characters: Dunning Perthshire" This contains the story of Dunning railway station being built two miles from the village because Lord Rollo and other landowners didn't want the line on their estates. Resource was necessary to get to the station and the train you wanted:

William S Cree was a business clerk and correspondent for a city newspaper, a notorious swearer when drunk but a ”braw writer" with a sharp mind. Having to go to Glasgow and aware that the train he needed to catch was an express, he sent word to the station to have the train stop to pick up a party of over forty. When the engine braked for this unusual stop at Dunning, Cree hopped aboard, explaining to the flustered stationmaster "42 next birthday!" The station closed to passengers in 1955, and shut down in 1961.

A curious co-incidence is that William Smail Cree's wife was also called Isabella Patterson. They were married in 1863 at Dunning, the year after the death of the other Isabella Paterson (one 't') whose swelling was cured by the herbal remedy. It appears also to be co-incidence that different branches of Perth Crees came to Dunning. Georgie Cree seems to be the first of her family to move to Dunning, having come from Dunfermline. A tentative look at her ancestry suggests that it goes back to John Cree and Isabella Smith who married and brought up a large family at Kinnoul from 1831. Catherine Cree of the Raws was in Dunning in 1800 when she married James Paterson. She was bom in Perth, one of eleven children of Thomas Crie and Catherine Millar, although Thomas was from Forteviot as were his parents Alexander Cree and Mary Millar.

I feel we are still very much groping in the dark with Perthshire Cree genealogies. There were so many Cree families in the twelve-mile circle around Perth that the possibility of picking the wrong parents at any stage is quite high.