Family Matters Part 5

 Discovering that my great, great Grandpa Joseph McCreery owned property in Martha’s Vineyard was just the beginning.  When I tried to ascertain why there was so much information on the McCreery side more details began to surface.  Buried in the pages of hand written correspondence was a sentence about visiting the store Uncle James owned in New York City named McCreery’s Department Store.  In the late 1800’s McCreery’s had the reputation of Macy’s and is listed among the emerging department stores of that era.  I happened upon an advertisement for McCreery Department Store dated 1948 for sale on eBay.  This particular detail surprised even my mother.  Searching for more information yielded little results, although I did find a photograph of the store.  James McCreery was born in Ireland, which corroborates my mother’s claim that there was some Irish in the blood line.  The store was founded before James arrived.  Perhaps James’ reason for coming to America was to run the store.  Later he inherited it or acquired it.  I found some additional information about James McCreery’s descendants online, but I could not validate the information because I did not have records of his wife or children.