See Lord Lindsay (25th earl of Crawford), Lives of the Lindsays (1849); A. Jervise, History and Traditions of the Land of the Lindsays (1882); G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage (1887-1898); H. T. Folkard, A Lindsay Record (1899); and Sir J. B. Paul’s edition of the Scots Peerage of Sir R. Douglas, vol. iii. (1906).
CRAWFORD, FRANCIS MARION (1854-1909), American author, was born at Bagni di Lucca, Italy, on the 2nd of August 1854, being the son of the American sculptor Thomas Crawford (q.v.), and the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the American poet. He studied successively at St Paul’s school, Concord, New Hampshire; Cambridge University; Heidelberg; and Rome. In 1879 he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited the Allahabad Indian Herald. Returning to America he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for a year, contributed to various periodicals, and in 1882 produced his first novel, Mr Isaacs, a brilliant sketch of modern Anglo-Indian life mingled with a touch of Oriental mystery. This book had an immediate success, and its author’s promise was confirmed by the publication of Dr Claudius (1883). After a brief residence in New York and Boston, in 1883 he returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home. This accounts perhaps for the fact that, in spite of his nationality, Marion Crawford’s books stand apart from any distinctively American current in literature. Year by year he published a number of successful novels: A Roman Singer (1884), An American Politician (1884), To Leeward (1884), Zoroaster (1885), A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886), Marzio’s Crucifix (1887), Saracinesca (1887), Paul Patoff (1887), With the Immortals (1888), Greifenstein (1889), Sant’ Ilario (1889), A Cigarette-maker’s Romance (1890), Khaled (1891), The Witch of Prague (1891), The Three Fates (1892), The Children of the King (1892), Don Orsino (1892), Marion Darche (1893), Pietro Ghisleri (1893), Katharine Lauderdale (1894), Love in Idleness (1894), The Ralstons, (1894), Casa Braccio (1895), Adam Johnston’s Son (1895), Taquisara (1896), A Rose of Yesterday (1897), Corleone (1897), Via Crucis (1899), In the Palace of the King (1900), Marietta (1901), Cecilia (1902), Whosoever Shall Offend (1904), Soprano (1905), A Lady of Rome (1906). He also published the historical works, Ave Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the South (1900)—renamed Sicily, Calabria and Malta in 1904,—and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905). In these his intimate knowledge of local Italian history combines with the romancist’s imaginative faculty to excellent effect. But his place in contemporary literature depends on his novels. He was a gifted narrator, and his books of fiction, full of historic vitality and dramatic characterization, became widely popular among readers to whom the realism of “problems” or the eccentricities of subjective analysis were repellent, for he could unfold a romantic story in an attractive way, setting his plot amid picturesque surroundings, and gratifying the reader’s intelligence by a style at once straightforward and accomplished. The Saracinesca series shows him perhaps at his best. A Cigarette-maker’s Romance was dramatized, and had considerable popularity on the stage as well as in its novel form; and in 1902 an original play from his pen, Francesco da Rimini, was produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt. He died at Sorrento on the 9th of April 1909.
CRAWFORD, THOMAS (1814-1857), American sculptor, was born of Irish parents in New York on the 22nd of March 1814. He showed at an early age great taste for art, and learnt to draw and to carve in wood. In his nineteenth year he entered the studio of a firm of monumental sculptors in his native city; and in the summer of 1835 he went to Rome and became a pupil of Thorwaldsen. The first work which made him generally known as a man of genius was his group of “Orpheus entering Hades in Search of Eurydice,” executed in 1839. This was followed by other poetical sculptures, among which were the “Babes in the Wood,” “Flora,” “Hebe and Ganymede,” “Sappho,” “Vesta,” the “Dancers,” and the “Hunter.” Among his statues and busts are especially noteworthy the bust of Josiah Quincy, executed for Harvard University (now in the Boston Athenaeum), the equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond, Virginia, the statue of Beethoven in the Boston music hall, statues of Channing and Henry Clay, and the colossal figure of “Armed Liberty” for the Capitol at Washington. For this building he executed also the figures for the pediment and began the bas-reliefs for the bronze doors, which were afterwards completed by W. H. Rinehart. The groups of the pediment symbolize the progress of civilization in America. Crawford’s works include a large number of bas-reliefs of Scriptural subjects taken from both the Old and the New Testaments. He made Rome his home, but he visited several times his native land—first in 1844 (in which year he married Louisa Ward), next in 1849, and lastly in 1856. He died in London on the 10th of October 1857.
See Das Lincoln Monument, eine Rede des Senator Charles Sumner, to which are appended the biographies of several sculptors, including that of Thomas Crawford (Frankfort a. M., 1868); Thomas Hicks, Eulogy on Thomas Crawford (New York, 1865).
CRAWFORD, WILLIAM HARRIS (1772-1834), American statesman, was born in Amherst county, Virginia, on the 24th of February 1772. When he was seven his parents moved into Edgefield district, South Carolina, and four years later into Columbus county, Georgia. The death of his father in 1788 left the family in reduced circumstances, and William made what he could by teaching school for six years. He then studied at Carmel Academy for two years, was principal, for a time, of one of the largest schools in Augusta, and in 1798 was admitted to the bar. From 1800 to 1802, with Horatio Marbury, he prepared a digest of the laws of Georgia from 1755 to 1800. From 1803 to 1807 he was a member of the State House of Representatives, becoming during this period the leader of one of two personal-political factions in the state that long continued in bitter strife, occasioning his fighting two duels, in one of which he killed his antagonist, and in the other was wounded in his wrist. From 1807 to 1813 he was a member of the United States Senate, of which he was president pro tempore from March 1812 to March 1813. In 1813 he declined the offer of the post of secretary of war, but from that year until 1815 was minister to the court of France. He was then secretary of war in 1815-1816, and secretary of the treasury from 1816 to 1825. In 1816 in the congressional caucus which nominated James Monroe for the presidency Crawford was a strong opposing candidate, a majority being at first in his favour, but when the vote was finally cast 65 were for Monroe and 54 for Crawford. In 1824, when the congressional caucus was fast becoming extinct, Crawford, being prepared to control it, insisted that it should be held, but of 216 Republicans only 66 attended; of these, 64 voted for Crawford. Three other candidates, however, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay, were otherwise put in the field. During the campaign Crawford was stricken with paralysis, and when the electoral vote was cast Jackson received 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. It remained for the house of representatives to choose from Jackson, Adams and Crawford, and through Clay’s influence Adams became president. Crawford was invited by Adams to continue as secretary of the treasury, but declined. He recovered his health sufficiently to become (in 1827) a circuit judge in his own state, but died while on circuit, in Elberton, Georgia, on the 15th of September 1834. In his day he was undoubtedly one of the foremost political leaders of the country, but his reputation has not stood the test of time. He was of imposing presence and had great conversational powers; but his inflexible integrity was not sufficiently tempered by tact and civility to admit of his winning general popularity. Consequently, although a skilful political organizer, he incurred the bitter enmity of other leaders of his time—Jackson, Adams and Calhoun. He won the admiration of Albert Gallatin and others by his powerful support of the movement in 1811 to recharter the Bank of the United States; he earned the condemnation of posterity by his authorship in 1820 of the four-years-term law, which limited the term of service of thousands of public officials to four years, and did much to develop the “spoils system.” He was a Liberal Democrat, and advised the calling of a constitutional convention as preferable to nullification or secession.
CRAWFORDSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Montgomery county, Indiana, U.S.A., situated about 40 m. N.W. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1890) 6089; (1900) 6649, including 230 negroes and 221 foreign-born; (1910) 9371. It is served by the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Vandalia railways, and by interurban electric lines. Wabash College, founded here in 1832 by Presbyterian missionaries but now non-sectarian, had in 1908 27 instructors, 345 students, and a library of 43,000 volumes. Among manufactures are flour, iron, wagons and carriages, acetylene lights, wire and nails, matches, brick paving blocks, and electrical machinery. North-east of the city there are valuable mineral springs, from which the city obtains its water-supply. Crawfordsville, named in honour of W. H. Crawford, was first settled about 1820, was laid out as a town in 1823, and was chartered as a city in 1863. It was for many years the home of Gen. Lew Wallace.