*Erastus Cravath was born on this date in 1833. He was a white-American abolitionist, educator, Chaplain, and administrator.
Erastus Milo Cravath was born in Homer, New York, to Orin Cravath, a Frenchman who was one of three men to form an abolition party in Homer, and he also used his home as a station on the Underground Railroad. As a boy, young Cravath grew up in a household devoted to the abolitionist cause and aiding escaping slaves. It was a time and place of progressive causes. Cravath first studied at the local common school and then attended Homer Academy. He studied at Oberlin College, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in 1857 and earning a Master of Divinity in 1860. After devoting much of his adult life to religion and education, Cravath earned a Doctor of Divinity degree at Grinnell College in 1886. In September 1860, Cravath married Ruth Anna Jackson, a member of a long-standing Quaker family in Pennsylvania and England.
Cravath became a pastor in the Congregational Church of Berlin Heights, Ohio, which later merged with the United Church of Christ. He was an abolitionist. He entered the Union Army in December 1863, serving until the war's end, including campaigns in Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee. By October 1865, Cravath had returned to Nashville, where he was a Field Agent of the American Missionary Association (AMA) and worked to establish schools for freedmen.
He purchased land for the Fisk School (now Fisk University), which he co-founded in 1866 with John Ogden, superintendent of education for the Freedmen's Bureau in Tennessee, and the Reverend Edward Parmelee Smith, also of the AMA. It offered classes in various subjects to children and adults, including reading, writing, and math. Within the first six months, the number of students climbed from 200 to 900. Using Fisk as his base, Cravath also established freedmen's schools in Macon, Milledgeville, Atlanta, Georgia, and at various points in Tennessee.
In September 1866, Cravath became District Secretary of the AMA in Cincinnati, Ohio. By 1870, he had been promoted to Field Secretary at the AMA office in New York City. In 1875, Cravath returned to Fisk University as President. He spent the next three years abroad touring with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. For more than 20 years, he led Fisk University, helping it through its growth and the building campaign of the 1880s, as well as the steady expansion of its education initiatives. In his later years, Erastus Cravath resided in St. Charles, Minnesota, where he passed away in 1900.
