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MORRIS D'CAMP CRAWFORD CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD aged about 70 aged about 60 MORRIS D'CAMP CRAWFORD and His Wife CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD Their Lives, Ancestries and Descendants By FRANK L. CRAWFORD Privately printed for Frank L. Crawford Ithaca, New York 1939 THIS EDITION IS CONFINED TO I 50 COPIES PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR AND INTENDED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION ONLY PRINTED BY THE CAYUGA PRESS, ITHACA, N. Y. A TRIBUTE URING the three past years in which the author of this D volume has been compiling material and writing the book, it has been our privilege to keep in touch with the·development of the work, and from time to time to make minor contributions to it. His purpose has been to set down in proper relation to their environment and to the events of the period in which they and their ancestors lived, the lives of the Reverend Morris D'Camp Crawford and of his wife Charlotte Holmes Crawford, our grandparents, all the descendants of whom owe a debt of gratitude to the writer of the book, which debt we desire to re­ cord here. To the evidence furnished by the work itself, we wish to add our testimony as to the intellectual integrity, the industry, and the literary restraint which have characterized the author. He has not permitted any motive to swerve him from his original pur­ pose or to state as facts anything which he could not prove by documents or records. If he had a doubt, he has expressed it; if he has erred, it has been on the side of moderation; if he has slighted any portion of the work, it is in the reserve with which he has touched upon his own career. He has repeatedly checked his own facts and those which have been submitted to him, nor has he hesitated to revise his con­ clusions on the presentation of fresh evidence. The book is fashioned in the form and pattern of his own thought, and is based upon the evidence which his own researches and the re­ searches of those who have assisted him have brought to light, all stated in lucid phrases of his own coinage. The final result is a sound, workmanlike piece of genealogical history and a valuable record of an American family, the whole integrated into a vivid story. Each of the living descendants of the author's parents is enriched by this record of our past. Per­ haps, in some future generation, another, imbued with his ... 111 . IV TRIBUTE spirit, may carry on the story. If so, he will find the foundation already laid to be strong and firm. On behalf of the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Morris D'Camp and Charlotte Holmes Crawford, we offer our loving thanks and appreciation to the author, our uncle­ Frank L. Crawford. Agnes C. L. Donohugh Morris DeCamp Crawford, 2d Mary M. Crawford Schuster Ruth Crawford Mitchell Henry Paine Crawford TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE. Foreword . lX Introduction . xv PART ONE Ancestry of Morris D'Camp Crawford First-The Crawford Line . 1 I Samuel Crawford of Scarsdale . 1 . II Civic Services of Samuel- Crawford . 7 III Military Services and Death of Samuel Crawford 1 o IV Jane Crawford, Wife of Samuel . 15 V Joseph Crawford, Son of Samuel . 1 7 Second-The Barker Line . 20 P~..RTTwo - Ancestry of Charlotte Holmes Crawford . Third-The Merritt Line . • Fourth-The Holmes Line . Fifth-The Union of the Merritt and Holmes Lines . 50 Life of Morris D'Camp ·Crawford . • 52 I Childhood ·and Youth . 52 II .The· Call · . 55 III Early Ministry . • 58 IV Marriage . 63 V Middle Life . 67 VI The Struggle over Slavery . 71 VII The Civil War, Reconstruction, Steps towards Re- conciliation . 74 VIII General Services to Education . 78 IX Man of Business and Administrator . 81 V • VI CONTENTS PAGE X Relations with his Children . 83 XI Later Years . 91 XII The End . 94 PART FoUR Interlude . 96 PART FIVE Children of Morris D'Camp and Charlotte Holmes Craw­ ford I Caroline Cra~ord Leaycraft 108 II Gilbert Holmes Crawford . III Morris Barker Crawford · IV Hanford Crawford . V :frank Lindsay Crawford . I 53 VI William Herbert Crawford . 164 PART SIX The Third and Fourth Generations . • 1 75 Append~ A-The Underhill Genealogy . 185 Appendix B-The Kniffins and Sniffins . I 88 Appendix C-The Purdy Descent . 189 Appendix D-Clerical Appointments of Morris D'Camp Crawford . .. 192 Appendix E-journal of a Trip made by Morris D'Camp · Crawford to Ohio in 1847 • . • • . • 193 Index . n • • • • • • • • • • • • • 203 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE MORRIS D'CAMP CRAWFORD, AGED 70 • • • • Frontispiece CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD, AGED 60 • • • Frontispiece HouSE OF SAMUEL CRAWFORD AT SCARSDALE-EXTERIOR • 4 OLD KITCHEN ·IN SAMUEL CRAWFORD'S HOUSE • • • • 4 MORRIS D'CAMP CRAWFORD, 1844 • • • • • • • 64 CHARLOTTE HOLMER CRAWFORD, 1844 • • • • • • 64 CRAWFORD FAMILY GROUP . • • • • • • • 91 EIGHTEENTH STREET CHURCH (N.Y.) . • • • • • 96 •• Vil This book was set on the Monotype in Baskerville (No. 353), a recutting made from the type cast from the matrices made by John Baskerville about 1757 at his foundry in Birmingham, England. Composed and printed by The Cayuga · Press, Ithaca, New York. The paper is Worthy Text, a 100% rag-content paper. The binding is by Vail­ Ballou Press~ Binghamton, New York, from designs by the author. .. V1ll FOREWORD HAVE written this book in memory of my parents, partly, I (before it is too late) to leave a record of their useful lives and 'lofty characters; partly to express the gratitude felt towards them by their children. The thoughts that moved me to under­ take this task were beautifully expressed in some lines which I venture to adapt from an exquisite work of a former generation: To leave the dead wholly dead is rude. Vivid creatures that they were, _they must not lie forgotten. Something of ·them may surely be saved if only my skill has been ade­ quate. Perhaps my grateful pen may bring to others a portion of the bounty I myself received.1 The book has gradually expanded as I have studied the an­ cestries and environments of my father and mother and have followed down the lives and fortunes of their descendants. I found that the study of the early past was necessary in order to explain how my parents came to be what they were, and that the picture would not be complete without a. brief chronicle of what the later generations of the family have done with the priceless heritage of health, brains and strength of character transmitted to them by their progenitors. Happily, in the case of almost every line of ancestry in­ vestigated, (excepting unfortunately that of our most outstand­ ing forebear, Samuel Crawford of Scarsdale) it has been possible to sho'\1\-~ an unbroken lineage back to an immigrant colonial ancestor. Apart from a slight Huguenot strain, my parents stemmed from pioneers who, with their fellows, came from the best physical stocks of Great Britain. The pioneers from these stocks and their descendants, through seven generations in a new country, conquered savage tribes, repulsed European enemies, subdued the adverse forces of Nature and built up for 1 From The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, by George Herbert Palmer. Copy­ right 1908. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company . IX X FOREWORD themselves and for those who followed them an enduring prosperity. My father's life spanned an era. He was born in 1819. A few years before that date, the people in the young Republic were still living according to the methods and standards of their an­ cestors in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. The invention of the steamboat, however, started the train of causes which changed the whole character of our civilization. By 1817, boats from New Orleans had ascended the Ohio River at high water to Pittsburgh, the Mississippi to the future site of St. Paul and the Missouri through its lower reaches. In 1824, when my father was five years old, the greatest fleet of steamboats in the . world was navigating the Mississippi and its affluents. 2 A year before his birth, the first good road from the Atlantic seaboard to the Middle West had been completed from Cumber­ land, Maryland, over the mountains to Wheeling on the Ohio River. 3 A few years later, in 1825, the opening of the Erie Canal made cheap water transportation available from New York City to all ports on the Upper Lakes. In 1828, the first few miles of railroad in this Country were built. The sewing machine was invented in .. 1845; the electric telegraph in the same year;. the telephone and the incandescent electric lamp were not per­ fected commercially until about 1880; yet all of these were in nearly universal use at the time of my father's death. In estimating the sources of any man's power and the merit of his life, weight must, of course, be given to the effect of his en­ vironment on him and to his own reactions towards it. Had my father been born a century earlier, he would have led the life of ~ small farmer and might have died unknown. It was his sur­ passingly good fortune to have his own life begin and keep pace with the social revolution brqught about by the _inventions of the new age. t "The Navigator" (1814). Stewart and Partington, History of Steam. (1824). 3 Channing, in Hist. of U. S., V, p. 7, speaking of the Cumberland Road, says: "From 1816 for 10 or 15 years, the eastern and middle portions * * * * were literally crowded with emigrants * * * * and wagons." • FOREWORD XI Having determined to be a preacher, his steps naturally turned towards the Methodist Church.

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