In search of Louisiana: Creel Family Motto--I think I Dig It

Friday, January 30, 2009

Creel Family Motto--I think I Dig It

So I was just aimlessly googling the name "Creel," which was my great grandmother's maiden name, and struck open a site that had the Creel family crest (still working on a picture), a little history (name first appeared in England after the Norman Conquest), and the family motto: Nil Morer Ictus." Translated (are you sitting down?) that means: I do not care for blows. Hell, me neither!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: That's funny! I did some digging in ancestry.com, which Ansley is a big fan of. I found a cousin who knew some info about my family.; January 30, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Doug said...: There is a reasonable chance you are related to the Creel family that first appears in 1680 Virginia with Charles Creel. If so, you are related to everybody. One group moved to Wood County VA, now Parkersburg, WV (my stepmother's home town). Some then went to KY or MO. The KY Creels spread far and wide. They include the Creels of Mexico (Google Henry Clay Creel). The MO Creels include George Creel of WWI media fame.

It is more likely you are related to the Creels that went to GA and then AL (my grandmother was a Creel from AL). Those Creels moved from AL, state by state, to eventually get to CA. It includes the Creels that were in 19th century New Orleans.

There are Creels in Ireland, Scotland, and England. I don't know how we are related, except that most, if not all the Creels that are in this country probably came by way of Ireland. Until you have more info, enjoy the story that is the most fun to tell. Don't worry about unimportant details. Feel free to follow that old Scots & Irish tradition of using what every version of a story gives the desired result for the time.; February 6, 2009 at 5:04 PM
Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn said...: Hi Douglas. Thanks for your post. Actually, the more info, the better. I'd love to trace the line....my vague understanding, from last time I checked this out, was that the family moved from Virginia on down. So that fits with Charles. Sounds like you've done a lot of the geneaology...do you have any of it online? I'm actually thinking about doing a book on some of this...; February 6, 2009 at 8:58 PM
Anonymous said...: It was intresting to find that Creel's have a Night in their ancestry. My family (Father and Grand Father are from north Florida and Alabama). I live in Wisconsin. It's also intresting to see how prominant the Creel name is in Mexico.

Steven Creel; October 25, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Unknown said...: Hi--we stumbled across your blog, and having helped my father-in-law, Ivy Creel, write a little book on his family history, I could not resist chiming in. My husband's father grew up on a farm in Joyce, Louisiana, located approximately in the middle of the state. HIS grandfather was Thomas L. Creel, whose family migrated from the Meridian, MS, area. Thomas Creel and his wife, Sarah Francis, had four children: Thomas, Piedy, Ellen and Callile Frank, (PaPa's father), or Frank, as he was called by family and friends. Frank ended up in Joyce, LA, father of 12 kids! My precious father-in-law (Ivy) is now 92 and the patriarch of the family. I don't know if this resonates with anyone else's history but if it does, I'd love to hear it. PaPa seems to know very little about his roots. I'd love to tell him more before he leaves this life. Thanks for listening.; December 29, 2009 at 7:34 PM
Sher Creel, Butterbean Design Studio - Photography, Graphic/Web Design and Art said...: Hi - we stumbled across your blog and, having helped my father-in-law, Ivy Creel, write a little booklet on his family history, I just had to chime in. PaPa Creel, as we call him, grew up on a farm in Joyce, LA, (approximately in the middle of the state). His grandfather, Thomas L Creel, and his family migrated to LA from the Meridian, MS area. He and his wife, Sarah Frances, had four children: Thomas, Piedy, Ellen and Callile Frank, (PaPa's father), or Frank, as he was called by family and friends. Frank settled in Joyce, LA, the father of 12 children. PaPa Creel (Ivy) has lived his adult life in Baton Rouge, LA. At 92 yrs old and the patriarch of those 12 children, he seems to know very little about his roots. If any of these names resonate with anyone, I'd love to know.. I'd love to be able to fill in some blanks for him before he leaves this life. Thanks for listening.; December 29, 2009 at 7:45 PM

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Welcome to In Search of Louisiana

I’m trying to figure out what Louisiana means to me.

It’s the place my mother was born, in a town called DeRidder, in the western part of the state. It is the place my grandmother, Aurelia, who was Scarlet O’Hara’s bleach blond twin, was raised, too. And her mother, Anne—my great-grandmother. There’s a tiny cemetery, the Creel Family Cemetery, in Reeves, a tiny town not too far from DeRidder, where the Creel family farm used to be. Anne was a Creel. She moved to DeRidder—a metropolis compared to Reeves, but tiny by most standards--with the insurance money from her first husband’s death. She ran a rooming house, in which she raised Aurelia and Aurelia’s brother, LaRue. And, for a time, she raised my mother, as well.

But I digress already. The point is, this family is, or was, so rooted, so of a place. In that tiny cemetery are generations of extended family. And along those back roads, you can find other family cemeteries, too. How often do you see that? My mother ended up moving north when she was 16. She went to college in Virginia and married a northerner and settled in the north. Or the relative north. I grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. And I grew up with a sick brother, which meant we couldn’t travel often. And my southern relatives weren’t, for the most part, the traveling type. So I grew up not knowing them, or Louisiana, well. And because of that, I think there’s a part of my mother, and grandmother, and myself, that eludes me, too.

Here’s what I think: I think this is a story about identity, and the identity we get from place. We inherit that identity from our parents and where they, and their family of origin, are from. So what happens, what does it mean, when so many of us get geographically further and further away from those places or origin? In my case, it’s also a story about north and south…because, though these people in the south are my family, though this place is part of my heritage, I’m not sure I can know it, by virtue of the northern latitude where I grew up. Can a northerner truly understand a southerner—even if they are members of the same family?

This was brought home to me recently, as I talked with my mother about LaRue, who she, and thus I, called Brother. I was telling her that, when we were down for Aurelia’s funeral, I kept trying to get Brother to tell me stories about Aurelia, growing up. I really just wanted to know more about her, and why she was the way she was. (I’ll get to the way she was in a future post.) But he was evasive. Just kept wiggling the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, looking straight ahead as he drove us down the back roads of Louisiana, en route to see one relative or another. “I don’t know Shug,” he’d drawl. (Shug was short for sugar.) My mother said, “Well, it’s kind of a southern way with outsiders.” Touché. And ouch.

Because I wasn’t an outsider. But then again, I was. I am. So where does that leave me?

In search of Louisiana

Friday, January 30, 2009

Creel Family Motto--I think I Dig It

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In search of Louisiana

Friday, January 30, 2009

Creel Family Motto--I think I Dig It

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