Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 03.djvu/45

 CRARY

CRAVATH

board of directors of the Potomska mills, of the Acushnet mills, and of numerous other corpora- tions. In 1870 he was elected president of the Mechanics' national bank of IS'ew Bedford. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Yale college in 1882. Mr. Crapo was man"ied, Jan. 22, 1857, to Sarah Davis, daughter of George and Serena (Davis) Tappan, and had two sons, Henry Rowland and Stanford Tappan Crapo.

CRARY, Isaac Edwin, representative, was born in Preston, Conn., Oct. 2, 1804 ; son of Elisha and Nabbey (Avery) Crary. He was gi'aduated at Trinity college, Hartford, Conn., in the class of 1827, the first class graduating from that insti- tution. He was admitted to the bar and in 1833 settled to practise in Marshall. Mich., where he subsequently became general of the state militia. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 183.") ; and the first representative in congress from the state, serving in the 24th, ^5th and 26th congresses 1835-41. He was re- gent of the University of Michigan, 1837-44; a member of the state board of education, 1850-52; and editor of the Democratic Erpoundcr for several years. He was a representative in the Michigan legislature, 1842-46, and speaker in 1846. He was twice married: first to Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock, niece of Bishop Brownell, and sec- ondly, in 1841, to Bellona, daughter of Judge Abner Pratt of Marshall. He died at Marshall, Mich., May 8, 1854.

CRAVATH, Erastus Milo, educator, was born at Homer, Cortland county, X.Y., July 1, 1833, son of Orin and Betsey (Northway) Cravath, gi-and- son of Samuel and Mamre (Bishop) Cravath, of Xorwalk, Conn. ; and a descendant of Ezekiel Cravath, born in the town of Boston in 1671, and his wife Elizabeth Hooke of Salisbury, Mass. , a granddaugh- ter of Governor Wil- liam Hooke. He was educated in the dis- trict school, at Ho- mer academj-, at New York central college, McGrawville, and at Oberlin college, where he was graduated in arts in 1857, and from ' \ y its theological de-

^ J\ ^ partment in 1860.

tially supported himself by teaching school during vacations. He was married, Sept. 18, 1860, to Ruth Anna Jackson, of Kennett Square, Pa., of Quaker ancestry, and a graduate of Oberlin, class of 1858. He was pastor of the

Congregational church at Berlin Heights. Lorain county, Ohio. 1860-'63 ; andcliaplain of the 101st Ohio volunteer infantry, 1863-65, serving in the Alabama campaign and in the battles of Franklin and Nashville. Having become impressed dur- ing the war with the needs of the eiuancipated slaves, he decided to devote his life to educa- tional work in the south, and became field agent of the American missionary association for the opening of schools for freedinen in the central south. In conjunction with the Rev. E. P. Smith,

>ft.

district secretary of the American missionary association at Cincinnati, and Prof. John Ogden, superintendent of- education of the Freedmen's bureau for Tennessee and Kentucky, and a field agent of the Western freedmen's aid commission of Cincinnati, he undertook the founding of a school for negroes at Nashville, Tenn., in Octo- ber, 1865. ■ On their own responsibility thej- pur- chased, at a cost of $16,000, a block of land on which stood a large hospital erected by the government for war purposes. Gen. Clinton Bowen Fisk, commissioner of the Freedmen's bureau, entered into the plans for foimding this school, which finally became Fisk university. Soon afterward the American missionary asso- ciation and the Western freedmen's aid commis- sion assumed the purchase, and sent out twenty teachers. Professor Ogden became principal and Mr. Cravath assumed the general business re- sponsibilities. He made the Fisk school his home while establishing schools at Atlanta, Macon, MilledgeviUe, Audersonville, Talladega and other cities further south. In July, 1866, he was ap- pointed district secretary of the American mis- sionary association at Cincinnati, having charge of collecting funds and of school and church work in Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Georgia and Alabama. In September, 1870, he became field secretary of the association at New York, and in that capacity assiuned charge of its entire work in the south. In July, 1875, he was elected the first president of the Fisk university. The first three years were spent in supervising the wonderfully successful efforts of the Jubilee singers to raise funds to enlarge the university