William Crane (1790 - 1866)

Born 5 May 1790 in Newark, Essex, New Jersey

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 28 Sep 1866 at age 76 in Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland

Biography

William is the son of Rufus, son of Jonas, son of John, son of Azariah, son of Jasper.

William is the son of Rufus and Charity (Campbell) Crane. He learned the shoemaker's trade and in November 1811 joined an elder brother in Richmond, Virginia, to sell a consignment of shoes. He returned to Newark to marry Lydia Dorsett, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on July 9, 1812. They lived in Richmond, where he became a successful merchant. Their four daughters and five sons included William Carey Crane, who became a prominent Baptist minister and president of Baylor University.

By his own pen, "Crane wrote": “I was born in Newark, N.J., on the fifth day of May 1790. My great grandfather was one of the eight individuals who moved from Connecticut and commenced the original settlement of that town about 1655. . . “The query arose in my mind ‘why cannot I go to Baltimore, and do just what the Lord may help me to do? Why can’t He bless the business ability which has been given me to sustain my family in Baltimore as well as in Richmond, and open to me a far wider field of doing good?”

Soon after arriving in Baltimore in 1834, Crane invited an ex-slave he had known in Virginia to begin "colored’ work in Maryland. Earning his living as a carpenter, "Moses C. Clayton" began a Sunday School in an old school building. He also held services there on Sunday with a congregation of impoverished free blacks, a majority of whom were usually members of his immediate family. From these small beginnings, the first African-American Baptist church in Maryland was constituted February 20, 1836.

William married Lydia Dorsett of Perth Amboy, New Jersey on 09 Jul 1812 at Essex, New Jersey and 2) Jean Nivin Daniel of Falmouth, Virginia on 20 Jul 1831. William may have had 15 children.

Sources

• "Genealogy of the Crane Family" Pg 379
• "Founder of 4th Baptist Church"
• "New Jersey, County Marriages, 1682-1956"
• "United States Census, 1850"
• "Find A Grave"