Early Life
McCreery was born in New York City, the son of John Alexander McCreery, a surgeon, and Louise Carrigan McCreery. His father was the son of a Scottish immigrant, James McCreery, who settled in New York in 1831; James McCreery later became a prominent wholesale dry-goods merchant. His mother was a daughter of Andrew Carrigan, an Irish immigrant who became an extremely wealthy provisions dealer and, upon retirement, a noted philanthropist. The wealthy McCreery family were among the first parishioners at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and several members of the family are interred, to this day, inside the cathedral. McCreery had two younger sisters, Christine Forbes McCreery Hoguet (1886–1951) and Mary McKay McCreery (1888–1964). The family resided on Fifth Avenue in New York, as well at a country estate in Stockbridge, Massachusetts known as "Council Grove"; the estate is still in the hands of the McCreery family today.
McCreery was educated by a private governess until entering Harvard University in 1902, graduating in 1906. From there McCreery received a degree in medicine from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1910. During World War I, McCreery served as a Major in the Medical Corps, and was stationed in France. It was there in 1918 that he met Miss Eileen Birkett Ravenshaw of England, an ambulance driver stationed in France as well. Miss Ravenshaw, a member of the prominent and noble Ravenshaw Family of England, was the daughter of Charles Withers Ravenshaw, a colonel in the Indian Political Service and a governor of the British colony of Nepal from 1902-1905. The extremely powerful Ravenshaw Family controlled the British East India Company throughout the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, and additionally descended from Sir William Withers, one time Lord Mayor of London. McCreery and Ravenshaw were married fifteen days after the Germans were defeated on November 26, 1918, and settled back in New York City.
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