USA > Maine > Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume II > Part 102
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while mingling with men. He could read char- acter, remember faces and call every man to whom he was once introduced ever after by name. This attribute gave him immense power, and the people of Maine soon forgot that he was a foreigner within their borders, and they claimed him with much pleasure as a Maine man clear through. If not to the manner born, he was to the manner quickly bred, and the people of the state at once cast about to do him honor and to honor them- selves by giving him political and national honors.
He was sent as a delegate to the first Re- publican National convention in 1856 which nominated John C. Fremont for the presidency of the United States. On returning from that great convention he expounded the principles of the new party to the waiting people of Maine, none too friendly to the radical cause marked out by the first Republican national platform, in his maiden speech, and its de- livery was the signal for sharp divisions and shiftings in politics in the state, and he was acknowledged as the leader of the new party. He joined the Presbyterian church in Augusta, in 1857, his wife being already a member. He sold his interests in the Journal, but continued its connection with the editorial department in- definitely, and removed to Portland and be- came part owner and editor of the Portland Advertiser. His career as a journalist ended in a blaze of glory, in 1858, when he was elected a representative from the commercial metropolis of the state in the state legislature. He appeared on the floor of the house at an auspicious time. He had abandoned journal- ism for the purpose of better representing his constituency, and the great party soon to take up the reins of government both state and national in legislative halls and to throw into the balance on the side of universal freedom and equal rights the weight of his oratory and the great strength of his personality. He wisely made his way carefully and avoided the meteoric display that was clearly at his com- mand by refusing other than the regular path of promotion offered to any man in the Maine house of representatives. He accepted a place on hard-worked committees, and was reluctant to receive even the honors of chairmanship of such committees as thrust on him, but the sessions of 1859 and 1860 had not the mark of his leadership in any pronounced way. In 1858 he accepted the chairmanship of the Re- publican state committee, and he held that office by the will of the successive state con- ventions up to 1878. He was speaker of the
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Maine house of representatives in 1861, and his usefulness and power began to be felt be- yond the confines of the adopted state when his party made him its candidate for repre- sentative in the United States congress at the fall convention of 1862, and he took his seat in the thirty-eighth congress at the opening of its session, December 7, 1863. He spoke to his constituents from the floor of the nomi- nating convention when he accepted the high honor of being made its candidate, saying : "The great object with us all is to subdue the rebellion speedily, effectually and finally. In our march to that end we must crush all in- tervening obstacles. If slavery or any other institution stands in the way, it must be re- moved. Perish all things else, the national /life must be saved." These words were pro- nounced in dark days. The fortunes of war were with the Confederates, and sympathizers in the north were plenty and outspoken. Peace at any price was a popular slogan, and the brave and decisive paragraph that closes our quotation from his speech of acceptance had the true ring, and the people accepted it and the depleted army in the field was rapidly filled up with carnest and determined fighting men. Maine sent out of her bone and sinew the best she could give, and that best did work that made Maine regiments immortal as their deeds became history. From his short but brilliant speeches on the floor of congress the inspiration of the framers of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States largely came. The amendment, known by his name, provided for the rehabilitation of state right of any seceding state, which should establish equal suffrage without regard to race and color, was too radical to be at first received with favor, but the powers of education set in motion rolled on, and in 1867 both branches of congress recognized his wis- dom by adopting the amendment. He served through the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, forty-second, forty-third and forty- fourth congresses, a period of thirteen years, and the house made him its speaker, 1869-76. In congress he was an unflinching advocate of real money, and opposed irrevocably any proposition that proposed to debase the cur- rency. He was not caught in the greenback trap in which so many of his colleagues fell. He claimed for the naturalized citizen of the United States every privilege accredited to a native born citizen in every part of the world, even to the extent of making its non-recog- nition by any nation a just cause for war, and this positive position led to the Anglo-Amer-
ican treaty of 1870. For the six years between 1869 and 1876 his position as speaker gave him little opportunity to join in public debate in which he was so ready and powerful, but at the same time he was enabled to exert a powerful influence in shaping the legislation of congress, and it was only on infrequent yet notable occasions that he left the speaker's chair to take part on the floor of the house. He vacated the chair when the bill to give to General Grant the right to proclaim "martial" law in the southern states and to suspend the habeas corpus act as measures to destroy the much feared Ku-Klux-Klan was before the house, and his vigorous opposition to the bill both on constitutional grounds and as an ex- pedient measure went far towards its defeat. He opposed the Bland Silver bill, and was in favor of a bimetalic currency and the mainten- ance of full weight in coining silver. He was favorable to the promotion of the shipping in- dustries of the United States by acts of con- gress, and the subsidizing of a line of mail- steamers to the Atlantic ports of South America, in order to stand before the world as equal in liberality and the protection of home interests as were the government of Great Britain and France. In matters re- lating primarily to his own state, he was keenly alive, and when a dual government threatened the state of Maine in 1879, he sig- nified his belief of the purity of the ballot whether in South Carolina or Maine, and he was active in the measures taken to prevent the ursurpation of the powers of government by a minority party.
His voice was raised and his influence exerted in behalf of trans-continental rail- roads in order to open the abundant riches of the great west, and he encouraged govern- mental appropriations to an extent that aroused many animosities, and as his interests in this method brought him in close relations with the officials of the many great railroad enterprises of the time, his motives were questioned by his enemies, and even questioned by his friends. This position led to positive accusation of wrongdoing. Especially was this so in 1876, when he was charged with having received $64,000 from the Union Pacific Railroad Com- pany for legislative services rendered, and it was not until he produced letters from the officers of the company declaring that he had never received a dollar from the company for any purpose whatever was the intense tension of public opinion relieved. When, in the case of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad, he was accused of having received bonds as a
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gratuity, and that lands along its route had been sold through the agency of the Union Pacific Company for his benefit, he replied that all the bonds of that company he ever procured he had bought in open market at market prices, and that he was holding them at a pecuniary loss. In the matter of the Kansas Pacific railroad he was charged with receiving bonds as gifts, and that he was a veritable party interested in a suit concerning them in a Kansas court. To this charge he promptly replied by asserting that his brother had been for years a holder of the stock of that road, and that the names had been con- founded. All these charges and others of a similar nature led the house of representatives to adopt a resolution to authorize a committee to invest the alleged sale of certain bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad to the Union Pacific Company, and the public press saw in it a direct attack on the in- tegrity of Representative Blaine. The com- mittee of investigation ascertained that an ex- tended business correspondence had for many years been carried on between Mr. Blaine and Warren Fisher, a Boston banker, and that some of these letters had fallen into the hands of a confidential clerk named Mulligan, and the clerk was summoned to appear before the committee in Washington. Mr. Blaine, on the arrival of Mulligan, obtained possession of the letters in question, and on the memor- able June 5. 1876, he produced them before the house itself, and, holding them in his hand, he asserted that the letters were private and that the house had no right to them, at the same time holding them aloft, he shouted in clarion tones that belonged only to Blaine, the orator, and said: "Thank God, I am not ashamed to show them. There is the very original package; and with some sense of hu- miliation, with a mortification I do not attempt to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of forty-four million of my countrymen while I read these letters from this desk." He read the letters, and with no undue haste, and when he had finished he turned to the speaker and asked if a despatch had been received by the house from Josiah Caldwell, one of the founders of the Fort Smith railroad, who was familiar with the whole transaction, and the speaker gave an evasive answer, to which Mr. Blaine ex- claimed: "Within my positive knowledge you received such a despatch and you have sup- pressed it." The scene that followed was tre- mendous, the effect of the charge electric, and
the scene that followed tumultuous beyond that recorded of any in the house. On the Sunday following Mr. Blaine, while on his way to church, and as he entered the portal, was prostrated with extreme heat and his physical condition for a time threatened seri- ous consequences, but he soon recovered, and it was during the same week that the Republi- can National convention was held, and he was the strongest candidate before the convention, leading all the other candidates, and lacking but twenty-eight votes of a majority on the seventh ballot. His opponents united, how- ever, to defeat him at this point, and threw their ballots to Rutherford B. Hayes. In the same year Senator Morrill resigned, to take his place in the cabinet of President Grant as secretary of the treasury, and Mr. Blaine was elected by the legislature of Maine United States senator to fill the vacancy.
In the senate he continued to advocate the governmental aid to railroads and steamship lines in behalf of the prosperity and growth of the United States. Here his powers as a debater and orator had full scope, and he advocated the measures with no uncertain voice. He supported the party in power in its policy in the south and formed the bill for the exclusion of the Chinese on the grounds of practicing the well being of the native laboring population and the maintenance of a high standard of wages and of living for those who obtained support by unskilled labor. As a United States senator he opposed the ap- pointment of an electoral commission to pass upon the validity of the presidential election of 1876, and the grounds of his objection was that congress could not confer upon a commis- sion powers not within the province of the body itself. His name was again before the Republican National convention in 1880, and his most formidable opponent appeared to be General Grant, who was put forward for the third term. On the first ballot Grant received three hundred and four votes and Blaine two hundred and eighty-four, and after a royal bat- tle of ballots for six days, his friends united with the other opponents of Grant, and on the twenty-sixth ballot nominated James A. Gar- field as the party candidate, and when Presi- dent Garfield made up his cabinet he asked Mr. Blaine to accept the position of secretary of state of the United States, and he accepted the office. As secretary of state of the United States his immediate concern was for the pres- ervation of peace between the independent on the American continent, through a system of arbitration, his primary purpose being to put
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an end to the war then waging between the republics of Chili and Peru, and having estab- lished peace and provided against the recur- rence of war to establish commercial relations between the United States and the South American republics that would open a market to the American republic that had been closed since the civil war by a refusal to subsidize American ships and place the country on the same basis as ships carrying the English or French flag, and which were then monopoli- zing the South American trade. His well-laid plans were frustrated by the assassination of President Garfield and the accession of Vice- president Arthur to the presidency. Mr. Blaine resigned from the cabinet December 19, 1882, and his successor in office reversed the policy pursued by him, and the nations that had ac- cepted Mr. Blaine's invitation to a Universal Peace Congress to assemble in Washington, November 24, 1892, were promptly notified that no such congress would be held. Mr. Blaine had served his country in the United States congress for twenty years and the leis- ure he gained by his withdrawal from official life was used in preparing a history of the po- litical affairs of government of which he had been so large a part and resulted in: "Twenty Years Congress," published 1884 and 1886. Meantime the time for the National conven- tion of 1884 rolled around, and the Republican convention convened and Mr. Blaine was a candidate before the convention the third time for the nomination of the highest office in the people's gift. and on the first ballot Mr. Blaine received three hundred and thirty-four and one-half votes, only seventy less than a ma- jority, and on the fourth ballot hie received five hundred and forty-one of the eight hun- dred and thirteen votes cast. Mr. Blaine made a personal canvass of the three doubtful states, New York, Indiana and Ohio. The canvass was phenomenal on account of the bitterness engendered by the method pursued, and the Mulligan letters and the cartoons from the pencil of Th. Nast, in Harper's Weekly, worked his destruction, aided by an unfortu- nate speech made by a reverend clergyman of New York on the eve of election. Mr. Blaine stood well with the Roman Catholics by rea- son of its being the faith of his mother, and the vote of Tammany Hall was in no sense cer- tain in its accustomed Democratic majority. New York, on the Saturday before the elec- tion, looked favorable to Blaine, and New York was to decide the election. The wealth of Wall street had gathered around a festive board on that night full of import to the Re-
publican party, and especially to the political success of Blaine. He had overcome the car- toonist, the Mulligan letters, and the other op- position offered by his political enemies. Wealth would cover itself with glory and gain the favor of the future president. Among the speakers at the festive board were men whose weight outside of political parties might be great. Politicians were not called, but the choice of non-politicians on the eve of battle was the fatal mistake. To round out a sen- tence a Baptist clergyman of renown in closing his speech divided the Democratic party as the party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, and the state was lost to Blaine by one thousand six hundred and forty-seven votes, and Grover Cleveland was the next president of the United States. In 1888 Mr. Blaine declined to allow his name to be used at the Republican Na- tional convention as a candidate, and Cleve- land was succeeded, March 4, 1889, by Harri- son, and Mr. Blaine came into his cabinet as secretary of state. He at once secured the proposed assembling of a congress of the American republics at Washington, in order to encourage friendly commercial intercourse, and twenty-six nations responded to the call. He pursued a vigorous policy in the interests of the American fisheries and the protection of the sealing industry on the coast of Alaska ; favored reciprocity in trade by which it would be in the power of government to admit free of duty staple goods of those nations willing to make proportional concessions in imports upon the products of the United States, and reciprocity treaties were made with Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, Santo Domingo, Costa Rica, Spain on behalf of Cuba, Brazil, British Guiana and the British West India Islands. His successful administration of the affairs of the state department marked him as a certain successor to Mr. Harrison in the presidential chair, as the nation had great faith in his ability to take the question of protection out of politics by a substitution of an apparent- ly more equitable compromise through reci- procity. The autumn of 1891. however, brought from him a letter positively withdraw- ing from the political field. This brought about the renomination of Harrison and the election on a reciprocity platform, and Mr. Blaine's health failing him, he resigned the portfolio of state June 3, 1892, and during the summer was obliged to abstain from political excite- ment, and he spent the summer at his home in Maine, returning to Washington at the end of the season. He died in his winter home in the National capital, January 27, 1893.
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The Crawfords belong to
CRAWFORD one of the most ancient houses in Ireland, being a branch of the Earls of Richmond. They were staunch Presbyterians, and some of them mi- grated to Scotland early in the seventeenth century. Several of them came directly to this country from Ireland. Dr. Robert Crawford was the first regular physician at Worcester, Massachusetts, whither he came from Ireland in 1718. He was the grandfather of William H. Crawford, secretary of the United States treasury from 1817 to 1825. Moses Crawford, a Presbyterian dissenter, was born in Enniskil- len, Ireland, and came to New York with his family in 1731. Probably the branch which has done most to keep the name before the public is the one represented by Abel and his son, Ethan Allen Crawford, both of them fa- mons White Mountain hunters and guides. who gave the name to Crawford Notch, in whose defiles they lived for many years.
(I) Thomas Crawford was born near the beginning of the eighteenth century, and lived at Haverhill, Massachusetts. He moved to various places in New Hampshire, and the last record that we have of him was when he bought land at Bridgewater, that state, in 1767. In 1741, when the boundary between Massa- chusetts and New Hampshire was adjusted, his homestead was severed from Haverhill. and annexed to the latter state; so he became a resident of New Hampshire without chan- ging his location. The town of Hampstead, including a part of the territory taken from Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1749, and he was an inhabitant of that town for several years. He was one of the petitioners for the incorporation of Hampstead, and one of the signers to the settlement of the controversy over the Haverhill and Kingston titles. In the French war he served in three expeditions for the reduction of Crown Point. In 1756 he was in Captain Parry's company, Colonel Meserve's regiment; in 1757, in Captain Mooney's company, Colonel Meserve's regi- ment ; and in 1758, in Captain John Hazen's company, Colonel Tash's regiment. He re- moved from Hampstead to New Chester (now Hill, New Hampshire) in 1767, and took up land in the section of the town which after- ward became Bridgewater. He was a promi- nent man in the settlement, and owned ex- tensive tracts of land.
On March 9, 1737-38. Thomas Crawford married, at Haverhill, Massachusetts, Jane Johnston, daughter of Michael and Mary (Hancock) Johnston, and a sister of Hon.
Charles Johnston, of Haverhill, New Hamp- shire. Six children are recorded: Abigail, born about 1740; Jonathan, 1746; Thomas, 1748; Sarah and Robert, baptized at Hamp- stead, 1755; John, baptized at Hampstead, 1758. Abigail Crawford, the eldest daughter, married Peter Heath, February 11, 1768, and lived at Bridgewater till 1804, when they re- moved to Stanstead, Province of Quebec, where she died in 1830, aged ninety years. The men of the family all had military inclina- tions. Jonathan and Thomas, as well as their younger brother Robert, whose sketch is given below, served in the revolution; in later life, Jonathan was captain, and Thomas was colonel in the militia. Thomas Crawford was a promi- nent citizen of New Chester and Bridgewater, was elected to many offices, including thirteen times as representative, and was a delegate in 1788 to the convention that ratified the consti- tution of the United States.
(II) Robert, third son of Thomas and Jane (Johnston) Crawford, was baptized at Hamp- stead, New Hampshire, in June, 1755, and died of scarlet fever, during a prevailing epidemic, at Concord, New Hampshire, April 18, 1813. Little is known about him except his military history, but that covers an extended period during the revolution, and he was one of the veterans who had enlisted for the war of 1812. According to the New Hampshire rolls, Robert Crawford served six months, from June 16 to December 16, 1775, in the regiment of Ran- gers under Colonel Timothy Bedel. In 1776 he was a member of the Fifth Regiment of Foot, Captain Joshua Abbott, Colonel Jolin Stark, and he signed receipts for pay during February, March and October of that year. We find "A travailing and Billeting Roll for Capt. Abbots Company in Colo Starks Regi- ment Fort George Novr ye 22d 1776," in which Robert Crawford is paid sixpence a day for "twelve days before marching," and a penny per mile for marching one hundred and fifty miles. January 30, 1777, Robert Craw- ford enlisted in the company of Captain Amos Morril, Colonel David Hobart, of Plymouth, and served till March 6, 1779. He received twenty pounds, state bounty, at the time. Rob- ert Crawford seems to have been a resident of New Chester, now Hill, New Hampshire, most of his life because he probably moved there, a boy in his early teens, when his father bought land there in 1767. During his last enlistment, 1777 to 1779, he is, credited from New Chester, and at the time of his death in Concord he is mentioned as one of the soldiers from New Chester. Captain Joshua Abbot,
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under whom Crawford served in 1776, was a resident of Concord; but the company was probably recruited from the surrounding re- gion, and New Chester or Hill lies only about twenty-five miles to the north.
(III) Benjamin, son of Robert Crawford, was born January 1, 1810, at Holderness, New Hampshire, died April 27, 1893, at Fairfield, Maine. When a young man of eighteen he went to Detroit, Maine, where for five years he worked as a lumberman for Nathan Lord. During the next thirty years he lived in Clin- ton and Burnham where he was engaged in farming and lumbering, and in 1863 came to Detroit, purchasing the only sawmill in the place, and operated this until 1868. He served as deacon of the Methodist church, and held several town offices of minor importance. In February, 1833, Deacon Benjamin Crawford married Charlotte L. Lord, daughter of Na- than Lord. Children : William Spratt, whose sketch follows; Llewellyn, Hadassah, Edward Willianı and Emma.
(IV) William Spratt, son of Deacon Ben- jamin and Charlotte L. (Lord) Crawford, was born at Burnham, Maine. December 6, 1853. When a boy he moved with his people to De- troit, where he was educated in the common schools. Till his eighteenth year he was em- ployed by his father in the sawmill; but he later moved to Hallowell, where he was em- ployed by the Millikens in the sawmill and lumber business. He is a Republican in poli- tics, and attends the Methodist church. He married. June 20, 1874, Elizabeth Frances Clark, daughter of George and Esther Clark, who was born June 20, 1856, at Skowhegan, Maine. Children : William M., whose sketch follows, and Bert, born December 10, 1876.
(V) William Maurice, elder son of William Spratt and Elizabeth F. (Clark) Crawford, was born March 29, 1875, at Detroit, Maine, and was educated in the common schools of Clinton, Fairfield and Pittston, now Randolph. After completing his education he was em- ployed by the F. E. Vickery Clothing Com- pany of Fairfield for two years, and later was engaged for a short time with the Durren Lum- ber Company at Seal Cove, Mount Desert, Maine. Upon his return to Fairfield he worked in the office of Dr. F. A. Knowlton, dentist. Mr. Crawford was later employed by Edward Ware, of Winslow, in the sawmill business; and he then spent one year at the Boston Dental College. The next year he was employed as shipping clerk by the Sampson Manufacturing Company of Fairfield. He then enlisted in the United States Seventh
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