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Francis Lindsay Crawford (1856 - 1950)

Francis Lindsay "Frank" Crawford
Born in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New Yorkmap
Son of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
Husband of — married 17 Dec 1885 in Manhattan Borough, New York County, New Yorkmap
Died at age 93 in 24 Ridge Road, Summit, Union County, New Jerseymap
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Contents

Biography

Synopsis

Francis Lindsay Crawford, son of Morris D’Camp and Charlotte (Holmes) Crawford, was born 14 October 1856[1] in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York; died 10 May 1950[2] at his home, 24 Ridge Road, Summit, Union County, New Jersey. He married, 17 December 1885 in New York City, New York County, New York, Emily Genevieve Buckland, daughter of Rabbi Joseph Wales and Emily (Wilson). Genevieve was born 11 March 1861[3] in Ossining, Westchester County, New York; died 24 February 1929[4] in Manhattan Borough, New York County, New York. Genevieve and Frank were both buried at Fairmount Cemetery, Chatham, Morris County, New Jersey.

Frank and Genevieve appeared on the 1900[5], 1910[6] and 1920[7] censuses in Summit, Union County, New Jersey. After Genevieve's death, Frank appeared on the 1930[8] census at 24 Ridge Road, Summit.

Autobiography

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF FRANK LINDSAY CRAWFORD

I am the fourth son and fifth child (among those who survived infancy) of Morris D'Camp Crawford and Charlotte Holmes Crawford.

[here is inserted material from the "Interlude".]

The life of the family was curiously interwoven with that of the Eighteenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, the church edifice of which still stands in that street just west of 8th Avenue in New York City, with the parsonage adjoining it on the east. My father, who had been pastor of the church for two years, 1850-52, during the early childhood of his two oldest children, returned there for two years more, 1860-62, and again for three years 1870-73. In the meantime, and after a year at Newburgh in 1862-3, he was appointed Presiding Elder of the New York District of the New York Conference, to serve for four years. He thereupon bought the house, No. 339 West 19th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, New York City, where he lived from April, 1863 to April, 1867, inclusive, his wife and children meanwhile attending the Eighteenth Street Church unofficially, while he himself preached from Sunday to Sunday at one of the many other churches under his supervision. Thus the family was associated with the same church for nine years out of the period 1860-1873.

This long and intimate association with a single church brought about the formation of warm friendships with certain other families, some of which friendships endured throughout the lives of the older Crawford children, and two of them resulted in marriages.

The other fact above referred to is that we children were never allowed to play in city streets, and, even when living outof-town, were discouraged from playing elsewhere than in the yard attached to the house where we happened to reside. This resulted in our forming few close acquaintances of our own age outside of our kindred, and in becoming practically each other's sole companions.

At Newburgh, Carrie and Holmes attended the so-called "Academy" there, Morris and Hanford a grammar school, and Will and I played at home, -- I myself receiving my first instruction in reading from my mother. Trinity Church, to which my father was appointed, still stands on Liberty Street, Newburgh. The parsonage stood on Montgomery Street.

The house in West 19th Street was an old-fashioned brick, three-story and basement, high stoop house. The back yard, surrounded by high fences and by the house itself, had been paved throughout with flagstones at my father's instance. We boys, therefore, had the whole yard for our games, and in winter, by flooding the pavement, made a tiny skating pond. We also, however, frequently went to the Central Park Lake when there was skating there.

Across the back of the house, level with the parlor floor, was a covered piazza, with a railing on the side towards the yard, on which our father had had erected a swing and an adjustable horizontal bar on a framework similar to that already described as in use at the 18th Street house.

We were at this time a very harmonious group. I can remember very little serious discord in the family. An outstanding feature of our family life through all the years at 19th Street and afterwards at Yonkers, was the almost uncanny skill of Morris with his jack-knife and the more common tools. Manual training for children had not then been heard of, but he, self-taught and with scant encouragement, had perfected what seemed to the rest of us a wizardry of handicraft. He made wooden chains, doll's furniture and jackstraws, as well as all manner of larger constructions. We children were allowed absolutely no pocket-money, unless we earned it. Indeed, there was none which could be allowed out of our father's scanty income. So Morris became the family carpenter, making all manner of playthings, and even sleds when we moved to Yonkers.

One of the amusing occupations to which we boys were spurred on by our desire for pocket-money was the catching of rats and mice, which were especially numerous in the 19th Street house. My older brothers had somehow wangled our mother into a contract by which she agreed to pay us three cents for every mouse and twelve cents for every rat caught. Forthwith we entered on a land-office business. With Morris to make the traps and the combined ingenuity of all of us directed to placing them where mice and rats most did congregate, we were soon rolling in wealth. But not for long did our monopoly continue. Our astute mother, probably fearing bankruptcy, procured a cat, whose competition soon cut our profits to a minimum.

From this time on, the paths of the older boys diverged in summers. For a number of years, Hanford went alone to Aunt Mary's farm, while Holmes and Morris visited the Hagamans. My own case was peculiar. While living in 18th Street in 1860-62, I had become a protege of two rather eccentric but most lovable families, named respectively Van Houten and Van Voorhis, who attended the Eighteenth Street Church. In the spring of 1865, these families both removed to a small hamlet, some nine miles northeast of Peekskill, known as Hallock's Mills, where the Van Houtens had purchased a farm, with a sawmill, gristmill and mill-pond appurtenant to it. Here, by invitation, I spent the summers of 1865 and 1866.

In recalling the period thus far touched on from 1860 to 1867, I think of my sister Carrie as a second mother to us boys. She had much of my mother's disposition. She was grave, very conscientious and devoted to duty as she saw it-duty which, in her case, I fear, took on too much of the form of self-sacrifice for the benefit of her numerous brothers. She worked industriously at her music, practicing hours daily, meanwhile teaching school so as to be able herself to pay for music lessons, which were becoming more and more expensive as her increased skill demanded better teachers.

In April of 1867 we moved to Yonkers, my father having been appointed pastor of the Methodist Church in that (then) small City, and there we lived for the next three years. Holmes went through the senior year of the College of the City of New York in 1867-8, and through the Columbia Law School in the two following years, living at home but commuting on the Hudson River (now New York Central) Railroad.

Our father held the rather unusual view that a boy, before going to college, should acquire some business training. In accordance with this theory, Morris spent about a year (1866-67) as a clerk and errand boy in the office of Mr. Frank Jayne, then in Maiden Lane, New York. Morris has recently told me that he regards that year as one of the most useful he ever spent. He gave up the place in the summer of 1867, and in the fall of that year entered the Introductory Class of the College of the City of New York, continuing at that institution for two years. Then, desiring a broader course, especially in the classics, he withdrew from that College, and in the fall of 1870 entered Wesleyan University.

Hanford, after passing one year (1867-8) and graduating, at the public grammar school in Yonkers known as Number 6, entered business, and so continued for two years, or until about July 1, 1870, meanwhile boarding in New York during the week with our Aunt Sarah Sanford in Attorney Street and spending his week-ends with the family at Yonkers. Will and I lived at home and attended No. 6 School throughout the three Yonkers years.

The Church edifice at Yonkers was situated at the southeast corner of North Broadway and Ashburton Avenue. It was an old, rather small, wooden building, with a basement in which Sunday School and minor religious meetings were held. It only covered a part of the lot on which it stood, and in its rear was a large yard and a horse shed, where horses and vehicles stood during the Sunday services. The parsonage stood at the rear of a large lot adjoining the Church lot on the south.

The house was small, poorly equipped and uncomfortable, with no plumbing except a kitchen tap. The five brothers slept in three beds in one bedrom of quite moderate size on the secand story, heated only by a stovepipe which came up through the floor from a "base burning" stove in the sitting room. They had to take their baths at night in washtubs before the kitchen fire. Some years after we left the place, a large new church edifice and a new parsonage, both of brick, were erected on the same sites, the old church being torn down.

Our mother's labors were doubled by the lack of modern comforts in the Yonkers parsonage. She could afford to keep only one ill-trained maidservant, and had to do much of the cooking herself. We boys had to do many of the chores; but this was not a bad thing for us.4

[4 During part of our stay in Yonkers, our cousin Edward H. Gilbert, son of Martha Holmes Gilbert, lived with us after his own mother's death. This fact led to a very close intimacy between him and my father's children.]

In spite of the privations and inconveniences of our lives, I look back upon the three years spent in Yonkers as the happiest of my boyhood. The life was essentially rural, and the brothers, when at home, enjoyed a freedom which the younger ones at least had never known. Our large front yard and the adjoining open space at the back of the church afforded ample room for all kinds of games. We had the country to roam through, the best of coasting in winter, and ample facilities for swimming in the Hudson in summer vacations, which were spent at home. Also we had a little dog. He was not much of a dog, just a common or garden variety of mongrel. But he was a perpetual joy to Will and to me.

[here we switch back to the main narrative.]

In April of 1870 I removed with the family to the parsonage of the Eighteenth Street Methodist Church in New York City, re-entered Grammar School No. 55 in West 20th Street and continued there up to the end of the school term in June of that year.

I have already referred to my father's view that every boy who was going to college should first obtain some practical business experience. A place was offered me by the firm of Fisk, Clark and Flagg, wholesale haberdashers, whose store my brother Hanford had just left. I entered their employ about July 1, 1870 (being then in my 14th year), and remained there until the end of January, 1872. Meanwhile I read or studied indefatigably during the scanty leisure left me by long business days and an exacting Sunday schedule.

In the month last mentioned, I returned to school, this time entering the highest class (then taught by "Jack" Oddy) of Grammar School No. 35 in West 13th Street, New York City, in which I continued until June, 1872, reviewing my former studies. I then took and passed the examinations for admission to the Introductory Class of the College of the City of New York, which I entered in the Fall of 1872, continuing there, however, only until March, 1873.

At the latter date, partly in order that I might pursue a broader course of study than that offered by the College just mentioned, but also, I have no doubt, because my family felt that I needed to undergo the rough and tumble experience of life in a boarding school (as I certainly did), it was decided that I should go to a regular preparatory school and obtain the usual college preparation. My brother Morris was then in the Junior Class of Wesleyan University, and since the expectation at that time was that I would follow in his footsteps and go to Wesleyan, my family selected the Maine Wesleyan Seminary at Kent's Hill, Maine, as a desirable place for me to prepare for college, in view of its excellent reputation in Methodist circles and of its inexpensive character. Accordingly, I entered the Maine school, graduating there in the Class of 1875.

From the scholastic standpoint, the choice of schools turned out well. The major subjects of Latin, Greek and Mathematics, especially the last, were very well taught at Kent's Hill. When later, with the encouragement of my brother Gilbert Holmes, I made up my mind to go to Harvard, my training proved to be adequate.

As a result of the loss of time due to my experiment in business, I was nearly 19 years old when I entered Harvard. I have always felt, however, that this fact was an advantage, because I approached every subject with a greater maturity. Early in my Freshman year, I won a substantial scholarship, which I retained for four years and the stipend from which made it possible for me to eke out the very modest allowance received from my father. The total of the stipends received under this scholarship I voluntarily repaid to the college some thirty years ago. I graduated in 1879. While in college, I belonged to the Signet, then an exclusive society of the junior and Senior years; to the O.K., a small senior society since extinct; and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa in the first eight of my class in my junior year.

Returning to New York, I entered Columbia Law School, supporting myself by teaching private pupils. At the end of the first year, finding myself in possession of a fortunate legacy received from the estate of my great aunt Eliza Barker, and of a modest sum saved from my earnings, I determined to see Europe, following the example of my brothers Morris and Hanford. I sailed on the Cunarder Gallia on June 30, 1880, and returned at the end of August, 1881.

Meeting my brother Hanford in Paris, I went with him to Cologne and met there my brother Morris and our friend Professor C. T. Winchester. Together we all went up the Rhine, making the usual stops, and then on to Munich and Oberammergau, where we saw the Passion Play. Hanford then accompanied Winchester and me on a month's trip through Switzerland. When the Swiss trip was over I settled down in a pension in Leipzig, in order to obtain some facility in the German vernacular. I remained in Germany, studying and travelling, through the autumn and winter. While in that country, I spent about one month in Berlin. There I frequently visited the Museum in which casts of famous statuary were displayed. With the aid of books, I studied these casts thoroughly, memorizing their details and familiarizing myself with the history of the originals, so far as known, and with the art theories concerning them. I found this knowledge of the utmost value when I went to Italy, as I did early in February, 1881. I spent about four months in the latter country, visiting most of the more famous places, and, studying the art collections. From Italy I went directly to Paris; thence to Belgium and Holland; and finally to London, from which I made a long trip through provincial England and southern Scotland.

In the autumn of 1881, I reentered Columbia Law School, at the same time becoming a student in the office of the law firm of Olin, Rives and Montgomery, at 149 Broadway, New York. Graduating from the Law School in June, 1882, I was admitted to the Bar of New York State in October of the same year. In the Spring of 1883, I formed a partnership with my eldest brother, Gilbert Holmes Crawford, under the firm name of G. H. & F. L. Crawford. This partnership continued until dissolved by mutual consent in 1903. From that year until 1907, I practiced alone. In the latter year I formed a new partnership with Myron Harris and Joseph W. Goodwin under the firm name of Crawford, Harris & Goodwin, which firm continued in business until 1917.

In the course of my legal practice, it has been my good fortune to be employed in a few great cases and in a considerable number of other important ones.

Thus, in 1899, in two cases, one in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, where I was associated with able counsel from that State, and one in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of N.Y., where I was alone, but for both of which cases I had discovered and presented by witnesses the evidence on which the Court relied, it was held (notwithstanding the rule that a geographical term would not be protected as a trademark), that, applying the doctrine of unfair competition, even its business address could not be used by a manufacturer in such a way as to deceive the unwary into buying the goods of such a manufacturer in the belief that they were really those of another maker who was "first in the field." (Opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes, 173 Mass. 87). Accordingly, the defendants were required to stamp upon their goods in close proximity to their business addresses a statement which showed that the defendants were new companies established long after the original manufacturer had associated its goods with the name of the town in which all the parties were doing business. These decisions have never been changed.

In 1907, when it became necessary to select junior counsel for the defendants to prepare for trial the case brought by the Government under the Sherman Anti-trust Act to dissolve the old Standard Oil Company, I was retained. This litigation occupied practically my entire time for a large part of three years. I had a large staff of assistants, who, together with myself, prepared the evidence and the trial briefs for the defense, covering transactions which had taken place during a period of nearly forty years in many different parts of the World. Later, when the case came up in the U. S. Supreme Court, I myself wrote most of the brief on the facts for the defendant company, in doing which I had to condense a record of over 11,000 pages into the very moderate amount of 250 pages.* In his opinion in that Court, (1911) Mr. Chief Justice White referred to this brief as a "powerful analysis of the facts." The decision in this case in the Supreme Court was of immense importance, because it gave the first broad construction of the Sherman Act and first announced the famous "rule of reason." (221 U.S., 1, 67).

[* Two chapters in the brief were written by other counsel under my direction.]

The late John G. Johnson of Philadelphia had been the senior counsel for the defendants in the Standard Oil case. When, in the latter part of 1910, the Government brought suit under the Sherman Act to dissolve the American Sugar Refining Company, the late James M. Beck, then the general counsel of the latter Company, consulted Mr. Johnson (who was also of counsel for the Sugar Company) as to the choice of junior counsel. Mr. Johnson recommended me. I was accordingly retained, and continued on the Sugar case for over four years, drawing pleadings, taking testimony at points as widely separated as New York, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, New Orleans and London, England, and preparing the trial brief. When the case was ready for argument in 1915, the Court postponed the hearing until the close of the war, and when taken up again after the armistice, the case was settled out of Court by the making of minor concessions by the Company. My work in the Sugar case led to my almost constant association for four years with Mr. Beck.

When the final decree in the Standard Oil case in 1911 adjudged that the old organization must be dissolved into its component parts, I was retained as their general counsel by five of the old constituent, but non-competing Companies, located respectively in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. Thereafter I had general charge of their law business, conducting for them numerous litigations, including many suits brought by various State governments to recover taxes claimed to be due from one or other of the Companies. Out of the large number of these cases, extending over some twenty-five years, (in which I was usually assisted by local counsel) I never lost a single case.

The most important, as it was one of the most interesting of these latter cases, was one involving a claim. by the State of West Virginia to recover taxes in the amount of $900,000 from my client, a pipe line Company. The case turned upon the question whether certain oil transported by the Company was in interstate commerce. I tried and won the case in the Circuit Court of that State, argued it twice on appeal in the highest court of West Virginia, and twice in the U. S. Supreme Court, finally gaining a complete victory there (December, 1921). Again, it was Mr. Justice Holmes who wrote the decision of the Court, in which he laid down an important new rule as to what constituted interstate commerce. (257 U.S. 265).

In another case brought in 1928 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of N.Y., a large Canadian corporation was sued by the U.S. Government for a claimed violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, alleged to have taken place in this Country. I was retained to defend. The charges were serious. Deferring any action on the merits, I moved to quash the service of process on the Corporation on the ground that it had been illegally made. That issue was tried out at great length, but finally the attempted service was held to be void. The Department of Justice then abandoned the case. I was also of counsel for the defense in a number of important cases brought by private parties to recover triple damages for alleged violations of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, in all of which my clients were successful, except in a single case which was settled out of Court.

My connection with cases brought under the Sherman Act made me rather well known in that field. So it happened that, in the year 1931, in a litigation in the French Courts in the Province of Quebec, I was invited to and did testify as an expert witness on the interpretation of that Act. The importance of the case is indicated by the fact that opposed to me as expert for the other side was the late Newton D. Baker, formerly Secretary of War, and then one of the foremost members of the American Bar.

My close association with Mr. James M. Beck in the Sugar case led to an invitation from him in 1917 to form a new partnership, which, under the firm name of Beck, Crawford & Harris, continued in business from 1917 to 1921. Mr. Beck had previously for some 14 years been a member of the well-known firm of Shearman & Sterling, in New York City, to which he had come from Washington, where he had been Assistant Attorney General of the United States. In 1921, having been appointed Solicitor General of the United States, he withdrew from our firm, rejoining it in 1925, on the expiration of his term of office, but withdrawing finally in 1927, upon his election to Congress. Mr. Harris and I continued the partnership of Crawford & Harris until Mr. Harris's death in July, 1939.

Returning to my private life, in 1885 I spent a long summer camping out with a guide in the Adirondacks, most of the time on the lower Saranac Lake. On the same trip, with my guide, I canoed through almost the entire lake region of the Adirondacks, climbed many available nearby peaks, fished and generally enjoyed myself in that delightful region. I returned finally with my health built up to a point which kept me in the most vigorous condition for a number of years afterwards.

On December 17, 1885 I married Genevieve Buckland, daughter of the (then) late Rev. R. J. W. Buckland, D.D., a prominent minister and scholar of the Baptist Church, who, at the time of his premature death in 1877, was Professor of Church History in the Rochester Theological Seminary. He was a lineal descendant of William Buckland, who emigrated from England and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1635. Dr. Buckland's wife, mother of Genevieve, born Emily Wilson, was a member of a large and well known New York family of English and Welsh descent.

I had first met my wife, by the merest chance, in the summer of 1877, when we both happened to be spending a few weeks in Fergusonville, an attractive but incredibly dull village in Delaware County, New York. She was then only sixteen, but to my eyes had all the charm which later characterized her. She entered Vassar College in 1878 and graduated there with honor in 1882. I saw her several times there at college functions and also saw her in New York during her winter vacations. We became engaged in May, 1883. She had much artistic talent and an unfailing sense of beauty. She was very well read, and combined efficiency with much sweetness of temperament, which made family life with her a delightful one. By this marriage I had four children, three daughters, Lesley, Constance and Dorothy, and one son Lindsay, who died in 1921, during his junior year at Harvard.

After living on Manhattan Island for nearly four years succeeding my marriage, I removed in April, 1889, with my family to Summit, New Jersey, which has ever since been my legal residence. In 1894, I took a step long under consideration, withdrew from the Methodist Church, and, with my wife, was confirmed in Calvary Episcopal Church of Summit, of which I have ever since been a member, communicant and pewholder, and in which my children grew up. In 1896 I built the house, since occupied by the family, at the corner of Ridge and Femwood Roads in Summit.

During the earlier years of my long residence at Summit, I took an active part in local, State and National politics. I suggested and organized the plan for creating the Soldiers' Memorial Field. As Chairman of a Community Committee, with my associates, I raised the original funds for that purpose, with them purchased and paid for the tract now constituting the Field, and conveyed it free of debt and without charge to the City. I served on the Vestry of Calvary Episcopal Church for 27 years and, as Senior Warden, acted as Chairman of the Building Committee which in 1927 superintended the erection of the new Parish House of that Church. The Committee also raised and collected funds sufficient largely to pay for the new building. During the same period I was every year a deputy to the Diocesan Convention of the Diocese of Newark and was a member of various important Committees of the Diocese, including, for eight years, the Standing Committee.

I was one of a small group of men who met in 1893 to plan a suitable private school for girls in Summit. Out of this movement grew the Kent Place School, opened in 1894, of which I became a trustee in 1895, Vice President of the Corporation in 1913, and President in 1917. I have been re-elected annually to the last office down to the present time. The growth and success of the School during that period have, I believe, been very unusual. From small beginnings, the devotion of successive Boards of Trustees, the generosity of many donors, and the magnificent leadership of its Principals have built up the School in reputation and equipment to a point where we may hope that its permanent prosperity is assured. It has been a great privilege to have been continuously the President of a school by which this great work has been achieved. The scholastic reputation of Kent Place is, I am told, unsurpassed in the Country among preparatory schools for girls. The School also now owns nearly an entire block of land in Summit and several notable buildings, and is free of debt (1939). That I have been able to contribute substantially to these results is a source to me of the greatest pride.

In 1922, upon the death of my son Lindsay, I established at Harvard a scholarship in his memory, the funds and the right of appointment to the scholarship being vested in the President and Fellows of Harvard University, but the right to nominate to the scholarship being given to the Faculty of Phillips Exeter Academy, of which Lindsay was a graduate. The scholarship is awarded annually to some graduate of Exeter who enters Harvard, and is available only during the Freshman year of the beneficiary. I further gave to the Exeter Academy a fund for the endowment of its library, also in memory of Lindsay. From the income of this fund have already (1939) been purchased over 1,550 volumes, each of which contains a book plate bearing Lindsay's name.

With my family, or some of its members, I have made nine other trips to Europe besides the first long trip in 1880-81, already spoken of. The only one of these later trips which deserves special mention is that of 1914. In the early summer of that year, my family were all in Europe. My wife and Dorothy were travelling in Italy, and my other children were staying in Dresden for the purpose of brushing up their German. In the last week of July, when it became evident that war must ensue, I cabled Lesley to close up their affairs in Dresden and, with Constance and Lindsay, to proceed to a certain hotel in Pontresina in eastern Switzerland. I sent a similar message to my wife. Fortunately, both messages were received and obeyed. In the meantime, I sailed for England on Saturday, August 1st, the day when war was declared by Germany against Russia. Just before the ship sailed, I received a cablegram from my wife, stating that she had received my message and was on her way to meet the others in Switzerland. Three days afterwards, when at sea, I received a radiogram from her stating that my entire family were reunited and were temporarily located in Zurich. My great relief at receiving this message may well be imagined.

I reached England on August 10, 1914, and for a week thereafter communicated by cable with my family almost daily, until in the interval between the French mobilization and the German invasion of France, the railroads to Paris were, for a few days, opened for private travel. Of this opportunity my family took advantage, reached Paris, and from there crossed to England without further difficulty. Our return passage, which had been engaged on a German ship, was necessarily cancelled, and for a long time no other was available. While waiting, we spent several weeks in Devonshire. Finally, passage for my family was obtained on a ship leaving the latter part of September, 1914, and they returned in safety. Meanwhile, I had been cabled by legal associates to remain in England long enough to take certain testimony, which I did, returning about the middle of October by the ill-fated Lusitania. Eight years afterwards, in 1922, I visited parts of the ruined war zone. On one of these trips, at Fère en Tardenois, I stood at the grave of my nephew Conrad, killed in action in the Aisne Salient, August 1, 1918.

In the summer of 1886, I had paid my first visit to the White Mountains, and climbed a number of the principal peaks. Subsequently, at frequent intervals, with my family, I spent many summers at different points in that region-among them North Conway, Franconia and Waterville -- finally settling at Squam Lake in 1904, as a guest of Deephaven Camp, at which spot I have ever since passed most of my summers, when I was not abroad. As long as my strength permitted, I climbed various important mountains frequently. Within the last fifteen years, I have limited my climbing to the foothills about Squam Lake, in conjunction with which recreation I have amused myself by cutting out and marking on these foothills numerous trails for the more modest walkers.

The family's visits to Waterville began after my daughters were old enough to be safely allowed to scramble at will and almost daily over and through the rapids of Mad River, which they did with keen relish and, in their own present judgment, with the result of making them strong and sure-footed. The transition from this sport to mountain climbing was easy and they soon began to accompany me on my less difficult trips. When a new trail from Waterville to the top of Mt. Whiteface over the northern approach to that peak was opened about 1902, my girls were the first children to make the long and toilsome ascent, as is noted in the "Log Book" still to be found in the library of the Waterville Inn. Since then, by repeated experiences, they have come to be better climbers than I ever was. My son Lindsay followed in their footsteps. My daughters have all helped me in laying out and establishing trails around Squam Lake. In the care of these trails, I have also had the assistance successively of three of my grandsons, who have all incidentally imbibed much of my own passionate love for the woods and the mountains.

Since the fall of 1935, I have not been actively engaged in law practice. Each winter I have spent several months in Florida and, every summer, except that of 1936, I have spent on Squam Lake. In 1936, my daughters Lesley and Constance and I, and part of the time my granddaughter Eunice Hamilton, Were in England. My leisure during these three or four years has largely been devoted to writing and editing this book, which I hope will be a valuable source of information and a landmark to future generations of the descendants of my parents.[9]


Death

FRANK L. CRAWFORD

SUMMIT, N. J., May 10 -- Frank Lindsay Crawford, retired New York lawyer, died tonight at his home at 24 Ridge Road. He was in his ninety-fourth year.

Born in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., Mr. Crawford was one of the oldest living graduates of Harvard, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1879. From Harvard, he went to the Columbia University Law School, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1882. He established in 1922 a scholarship at Philips Exeter Academy for students planning a Harvard education.

Mr. Crawford practiced law in New York for sixty years and retired in 1941. He was first associated with his brother, the late Gilbert H. Crawford, and later became a partner in the law firm of Beck, Crawford & Harris, with offices at 32 Liberty Street, New York.[10]


External Links


Sources

Footnotes

  1. Francis L. Crawford: 1908 passport application #56125, application made 8 June 1908, passport issued 9 June 1908.
  2. Francis L. Crawford: obituary, The New York Times, 11 May 1950.
  3. Emily G. Crawford: 1908 passport application #57034, application made 12 June 1908, passport issued 16 June 1908.
  4. Emily G. (Buckland) Crawford: New York, New York, Death Index, 1862-1948.
  5. Francis L. Crawford: 1900 U. S. Census (Summit, Union County, New Jersey); Enumeration district 138, sheet 24A [191], line 48; sheet 24B [191], line 51, lines 48-49; information recorded 20 June 1900; nominal census date, 1 June 1900.
  6. Francis L. Crawford: 1910 U. S. Census (Summit, Union County, New Jersey); Enumerarion district 110, sheet 14B [99], line 62, lines 62-63; information recorded 27 April 1910; nominal census date, 15 April 1910.
  7. Francis L. Crawford: 1920 U. S. Census (Summit, Union County, New Jersey); Enumeration district 157, sheet 14A [183], line 40, lines 40-41; information recorded 13 January 1920; nominal census date, 1 January 1920.
  8. Francis L. Crawford: 1930 U. S. Census (Summit, Union County, New Jersey); Enumeration district 20-154, sheet 8B [188], line 100; sheet 9A [189], line 1, line 100; information recorded 11 April 1930; nominal census date, 1 April 1930.
  9. Morris D'Camp Crawford and His Wife Charlotte Holmes Crawford: Their Lives, Ancestries and Descendants by Francis (Frank) Lindsay Crawford (Ithaca, New York: privately printed for the author by the Cayuga Press, 1939), pages 153-164 [edited].
  10. The New York Times, 11 May 1950.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Charles Oliver for starting this profile.

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C  >  Crawford  >  Francis Lindsay Crawford