McCreery was a clerk in the Office of the Assistant Attorney General in Iowa who authored one book of poems, Songs of Toil and Triumph, and one exceptionally famous poem, "There is no Death."
McGowran, Katharine. “Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth (1861-1907).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.