Crane – Lillie Family Collection 1915 – 2009
Woods Hole Historical Collection P. O. Box 185 Woods Hole, MA 02543 REGISTER Crane – Lillie Family Collection 1915 – 2009 1 box !2 CRANE FAMILY Biographical Notes Charles Richard Crane Born in 1858, Charles Richard Crane was an industrialist, philanthropist, diplomat, and world traveler. His father, Richard Teller Crane of Chicago, was a machinist who founded the R. T. Crane Brass & Bell Foundry. The foundry made industrial supplies, first brass casings, later pipes and fittings, heating systems and elevators. In 1877, while working for his father’s foundry, Crane began traveling abroad for his father’s business and for pleasure. During the next seven years, traveling to the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, Crane became well acquainted with the people and their cultures. This travel, as well as the work in his father’s factories, served as Crane’s higher education. At nineteen Crane had enrolled in the Stevens Institute in Hoboken, N. J. to study engineering, but he found formal education was not for him. At his father’s suggestion, he quit school and devoted the time he would have spent at Stevens to travel. His father expected him to travel seriously and to make it part of his general education. Crane married his cousin, Cornelia Workman Smith, of Patterson, New Jersey in 1881. Charles and Cornelia had five children, Cornelia, Richard, Mary Josephine, Frances Anita, and John Oliver. After he and Cornelia married, Crane headed the Crane Elevator Company in New York City. Eventually the family returned to Chicago where Crane continued to work in the his father’s company.
[Show full text]