WILLIAM CRAWFORD, Biography / Grant Township, Clare County, Michigan 
 
Submitted for use by USGENWEB Clare County, Michigan February 
2003                    Janet Wilkinson Schwartz [wilkinschw@aol.com] 
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Biographical History of Northern Michigan.  B.F. Bowen & Company, 1905. 
 
WILLIAM CRAWFORD 
 
The two most strongly marked characteristics of the east and the west are 
combined in the residents of the section of country of which this volume treats.  
The enthusiastic enterprise which overleaps all obstacles and makes possible 
almost any undertaking in the comparatively new and vigorous western states is 
here tempered by the stable and more careful policy that we have borrowed from 
our eastern neighbors, making the combination one of peculiar force and power.  
It has been the means of placing this section of the Union on a par with the older 
east, at the same time producing in business affairs a reliability and certainty 
freqently lacking in the west.  Among those who have been prominently identified 
with the civic and industrial progress of Clare county is Mr. CRAWFORD, who is 
one of the representative farmers of Grant township, where he commands 
unqualified confidence and regard by reason of his sterling attributes of 
character. 
 
WILLIAM CRAWFORD is a native of the Emerald Isle but is essentially American 
in thought and animation, having been a resident of the United States from his 
early childhood.  He was born in Ireland, on the 1st of May, 1846, and later his 
parents immigrated to the United States and located in Lorain county, Ohio, 
where he was reared and educated, receiving such advantages as were afforded 
in the common schools of the locality and period.  In 1861 he began sailing on 
the great lakes, continuing to thus follow a seafaring life until September 14th of 
the following year, when he gave evidence of his patriotism by tendering his 
services in defense of the Union, whose integrity was imperiled through armed 
rebellion.  He enlisted as a member of Company I, Fourteenth New York Heavy 
Artillery, with which he proceeded to the front and with which he served until the 
close of the war, making the record of a valiant and faithful soldier and taking part 
in many of the important battles of the great internecine conflict.  In the 
engagement at Crab Orchard, Tennessee, he was wounded in the forehead but 
was not long incapacitated for active duty, and the history of his command is 
essentially the history of his honorable military career. 
 
After the close of the war Mr. CRAWFORD returned to Lorain county, Ohio, 
where he associated himself with his brother ROBERT in the purchase of one 
hundred acres of timber land.  They cut the timber and disposed of same and 
finally sold the land.  In 1868 our subject set forth for California, but stopped 
while en route to visit relatives in Michigan.  Here he found employment in 
connection with the surveying of the route of the Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad, 
the result being that he abandoned his trip to the Pacific coast.  Within the few 
months he was employed in the surveying work he looked over much of the 
country in the eastern part of Michigan, and for a time he was engaged in 
speculating in land on his own responsibility and as agent for other persons.  He 
finally determined to take up his permanent residence in the state, and his 
judgement led him to select Clare county as his place of abode.  In the autumn of 
1868 Mr. CRAWFORD purchased one hundred and sixty acres of wild and 
heavily timbered land in section 12, Grant township, and the same is a part of his 
present finely improved landed estate of two hundred and forty acres, the major 
portion of which is under a high state of cultivation.  He has been one of the 
energetic, progressive and public-spirited citizens of this section of the state and 
has done much in connection with the development and upbuilding of Clare 
county, while his fine homestead stands in unmistakable evidence of the 
prosperity which has attended his earnest efforts.  He assisted in the 
organization of the county and also of Grant township, being the first incumbent 
of the office of register of deeds of Clare county and the first supervisor of the 
township mentioned, while he has held various other offices of public trust in the 
later years, ever retaining the esteem and good will of the people of the county 
and being known as one of the sterling pioneers of this favored section of the 
state.  In politics he gives an unwavering allegiance to the Republican party, in 
whose local ranks he is an active worker, and both he and his wife are zealous 
members of the Congregational church at Dover, in Grant township, while he was 
one of those chiefly instrumental in effecting the erection of the handsome church 
edifice. 
 
Mr. CRAWFORD was married three times.  His first wife, Miss LAURA HURSH, 
died.  His second union was with Miss RUTH FIELDS, who died at the age of 
twenty-nine years, leaving three children, MINNIE, LETTA and JAMES.  On the 
23rd of December, 1887, Mr. CRAWFORD married his present wife, whose 
maiden name was BERTHA DAVIS, and they have three children, ETHEL, 
ELIZABETH and WILLIAM T.