Crawford and Brown Family papers

Consists of letters between members of the Crawford and Brown families, family and legal documents, and three printed items.

Letters between members of the Crawford and Brown families comprise the bulk of this collection. Approximately 300 letters are included. Although letters to and from Rev. Henry Crawford and Robert Grant Brown dominate the collection, other family members who are represented include Henry Crawford, Esq. (grandfather of Rev. Henry Crawford); Robert and Elizabeth Elvy Crawford (parents of Rev. Henry Crawford); several sisters of Rev. Henry Crawford including Mary Eleanor, Matilda, Anne, and Susanna Frances; Rev. George Brown (father of Robert Grant Brown); and Alexander Brown (brother of Robert Grant Brown). Included with Alexander Brown’s letters are three letters from Alexander Bain, a classmate who went on to become a prominent psychologist and logician.

Following the correspondence are other Crawford and Brown family papers, including baptism records for Robert Grant Brown and Eleanor Crawford; the marriage certificate of Robert Grant Brown and Susanna Frances Crawford; indentures, wills, and other legal documents; handwritten financial records; and three folders of poetry by unidentified individuals.

At the end of the collection are three printed items. Half-Lights on Chelsfield Court Lodge (1933) includes a narrative history of the Crawford family’s time at Chelsfield Court, as well as detailed genealogical charts spanning several generations of the Crawford and Brown families. Extracts from the Cash-Book of Henry Crawford, H.E.I.C.S. (1907) includes information on Henry Crawford, Esq.’s (grandfather of Rev. Henry Crawford) service in India from 1802-1809. There is also a 1927 Ward, Lock, and Co’s Motoring and Touring Map of Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester. The significance of this map is unclear.

Rev. Henry Crawford was born in England in 1816 at Chelsfield Court Lodge, Kent, England. He was the son of Robert Crawford (1789-1860) and his wife, Elizabeth Elvy Crawford (1788-1850). Henry studied with a surgeon and practiced medicine in Kent before pursuing theological studies at King’s College, London. In 1851 he, along with his wife Caroline Wallen Crawford and their children, traveled to Jerusalem, where Henry became Chaplain of Christ Church. Ill health forced him to return to England several years prior to his death in 1863.

In Jerusalem Henry became friends with Robert Grant Brown, a Presbyterian minister and missionary. Robert, who was the son of Rev. George Brown, had previously been sent to Alexandria by the Scottish Society for the Conversion of Israel, and also traveled in Aleppo and Lebanon. In 1855, Robert married Henry’s sister, Susanna Frances Crawford, who had traveled to Jerusalem to visit Henry. In 1876 Robert became Secretary to the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews.

The connection between the Crawford and Brown families continued into the next generation, when Rev. Henry Crawford’s son Henry Leighton Crawford married his cousin Elizabeth Alba Brown (daughter of Robert Grant Brown and Susanna Frances Crawford Brown).

Detailed genealogical information about the Crawford and Brown families, including several family trees, is available in the book Half-Lights on Chelsfield Court Lodge (box 4, folder 23).

1.6 cubic ft.