I
The Crabtree family is ancient and honorable. Though the beginnings of the American branch are obscure, the family’s origin is undoubted. Its founder was the well-known Adam Crabtree, a landed proprietor whose country estate was notable for its extent and magnificence, but especially for a certain famous tree, which bore beautiful but bitter apples, called crabs, whence the family took its name. He had perhaps the largest private zoölogical garden ever assembled, unequaled for completeness, until one of his descendants, Noah Crabtree, built up his collection.
Adam Crabtree lived in Eden, Mesopotamia, where, in 4004 B. C., he married his second wife, Eve Sparerib. Their third son, Seth, was the ancestor of the American branch of the family.
Though a man of large means, Adam Crabtree’s taste in dress was simple. He commonly wore only a sort of sporran made of fig-leaves. His second wife, Eve, was more given to dress than his first, Lilith, but was really unostentatious. Her costume was a mere surcingle of the same material, edged with scallops of geraniums. It is regrettable that her quiet taste was not inherited by her American descendants.
The dominant family trait of restlessness was early displayed in the departure of the Adam Crabtrees from Eden, shortly after their marriage. Longevity was also a characteristic, emphasized in the case of old Methuselah Crabtree. At the time of his death he was the oldest inhabitant of his home town.
Noah Crabtree was an eminent shipmaster. He was the genius who put the ark in archæology. Successive Crabtrees kept on the move, Arphaxad, grandson of Noah, Terah, his descendant in the seventh generation, and Abraham, son of Terah, were notable travelers.
Abraham’s great-grandson was the first Reuben Crabtree. The first to engage in the business so successfully conducted years afterward in San Francisco, the dealing in spices, was Solomon Crabtree, an importer in a large way of business.
The coming of the family to England, whence the founder of the American branch emigrated, is wrapped in the mists of history. But at the Round Table, it seems, the family was represented by the knight known by the family’s commonest pseudonym, Bors.
Throughout this distinguished line of ancestors there were displayed the Crabtree characteristics of longevity, frequent change of abode, large families and complicated kinships. These are especially observable in the Earlier Eastern line but persist remarkably to the present day. No Crabtree can ever confidently state his relationship to any other without consulting the family tree, which each carries about with him.