Walter Crisp Biography


	This biography appears on pages 631-632 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. I (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	JUDGE WALTER CRISP, of Dell Rapids, South Dakota, was born in 
Cambridgeshire, England, June 27, 1849, and spent the first twenty 
years of his life in that country, receiving the meanwhile a fair 
education by attending the schools of his native place until completing 
the usual course of study. On May 17, 1869, he was united in marriage 
to Miss Lottie Topcott, of Hertfordshire, and the following month 
brought his bride to the United States, settling first in Dane county, 
Wisconsin, where he lived as a farmer for a period of little over three 
years. In April, 1873, Mr. Crisp disposed of his interests in Wisconsin 
and migrated to South Dakota, arriving at Dell Rapids on the second 
Sunday of June following, and immediately thereafter took up a 
homestead in what is now Logan township, which he at once proceeded to 
improve and upon which he lived and prospered until 1901. In the fall 
of the latter year he moved to Dell Rapids and since then has made this 
city his home, being prominently identified with its growth and 
prosperity, besides filling at different times important public and 
municipal positions. In addition to his city interests he has large 
landed property, owning in sections 9 and 16, Logan township, a fine 
ranch of eight hundred acres, a considerable part of which is under a 
high state of cultivation, the rest being devoted to stock raising, a 
business he has pursued with marked success ever since coming west. 
While living in this place he served for a number of years as justice 
of the peace, also held several other minor positions and since 
changing his abode to Dell Rapids he has been almost constantly in 
public office, being at this time police judge, to which post he was 
elected in 1902.  

	Judge Crisp is a wide-awake, progressive western man, fully in 
touch with the enterprising spirit of the new state in which he lives 
and an influential factor in all matters concerning the growth and 
prosperity of the thriving city of his residence. He enjoys worthy 
prestige as an intelligent, public-spirited man of affairs, and as a 
citizen he has used his best efforts to promote the welfare of his 
fellow men, being not only progressive in business but charitable to 
the extent of aiding all organized and private benevolences, and a 
leading spirit in a number of fraternal orders which tend to the social 
and moral advancement of the community. The Judge is an honored member 
of the Masonic fraternity, in which he has risen to the thirty-second 
degree, and is also an active worker in the Odd Fellows, Pythian, 
Modern Woodmen of America, Knights of the Maccabees and Elks lodges, of 
Dell Rapids, in all of which he has held, and in some still holds, 
important official stations. He was reared in the faith of the 
Episcopal church, and since early youth has been a consistent member of 
the same, being at this time warden of the church in Dell Rapids and 
one of the congregation's staunchest supporters and most liberal 
contributors. Broad-minded and liberal, he recognizes good wherever 
found and by whatever name designated, consequently his liberality is 
by no means confined to the religious organization in which his 
interests are chiefly centered, but is also extended to other churches, 
in fact to all agencies for the moral and spiritual uplifting of 
humanity. He has been successful in his business career, having 
acquired a sufficiency of material wealth to render his condition 
independent, and he is now enjoying a comfortable and luxurious home 
and the advantages derived from a well spent life, being respected by 
the community, beloved by his family and friends, and standing the peer 
of any of his contemporaries in all that 
constitutes symmetrically developed manhood.  

	Mrs. Crisp, whose birth occurred in Hertfordshire, England, on 
August 19, 1846, has borne her husband four children, all sons, their 
names being Walter J., William H., Elmer E. and John F.