Harry Jennings Crawford and Elizabeth Hafele
Husband Harry Jennings Crawford 1 2
Born: 19 Jan 1867 - Emlenton, Venango Co, PA 2 Christened: Died: 3 Nov 1953 Buried: - Emlenton Cemetery, Emlenton, Venango Co, PA 3
Father: Samuel W. Crawford (1829-1903) 4 5 6 Mother: Katharine Jane Truby (1837-1927) 4 6 7
Marriage: 1898 - ? Venango Co, PA
Wife Elizabeth Hafele
Born: 1873 - Foxburg, Clarion Co, PA Christened: Died: 30 Jul 1924 Buried: - Emlenton Cemetery, Emlenton, Venango Co, PA 3
Father: Mathias Hafele ( - ) Mother: Elizabeth Kline ( - )
Children
1 M [Infant] Crawford
Born: 1900 Christened: Died: 1900 Buried: - Emlenton Cemetery, Emlenton, Venango Co, PA 3
2 F Elizabeth Louise Crawford 2
Born: Abt 1903 - Emlenton, Venango Co, PA Christened: Died: Buried:Spouse: Paul H. Biery (Abt 1903- ) 2 8 Marr: 20 Oct 1934 - Emlenton, Venango Co, PA 9
3 F Katherine Jane Crawford 10
Born: 8 Jun 1911 - Emlenton, Venango Co, PA Christened: Died: May 1981 Buried:Spouse: George Almen Breene (1910-1973) 10 Marr: 11 Jun 1938 - ? Venango Co, PA 10
General Notes: Husband - Harry Jennings Crawford
He was educated in the public schools of Emlenton, PA. In his youth he spent a number of years pumping oil wells for his father and then became manager and treasurer of the Emlenton Gas Company, a connection he continued for five or six years. Afterward he was foreman for the South Penn Oil Company for a brief period, returning at the end of this time to the Emlenton Gas Company as manager and treasurer for a decade and a half. Meanwhile, as director of the First National Bank of Emlenton, he had already embarked upon his career as a banker. When the cashier of this institution became seriously ill, Mr. Crawford came in to take charge. Eventually he became president of the First National Bank of Emlenton. This development he followed by assisting in the organization of six or eight local banks in Venango and Clarion counties. Until the Bank Act prohibited the holding of more than three directorates at the same time, he served as director of all these institutions. His record as a banker brought him a wide reputation and led to his subsequent election as president of the Oil City National Bank and the Citizens Banking Company of Oil City. In 1939 he resigned as president of the latter institution in compliance with the law forbidding the holding of two bank presidencies in the same community by one individual, but continued as president of the Oil City National Bank and the First National Bank of Emlenton, whose affairs he guided for so many years.
Despite the responsibilities he assumed as a banker, he never relinquished his early interests in the oil and gas industry. About 1903 he formed a partnership with T. B. Gregory, of Emlenton, under the name of Crawford and Gregory, to engage in oil operations. His interests included not only the production but the refining of oil and the production of natural gas. He was president of the Quaker State Oil Refining Company of Oil City and a director of a number of its affiliates; a director of the Columbia Gas & Electric Corporation of New York City; a director of the Manufacturers Light & Heat Company of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Fuel & Supply Company of Emlenton; vice-president and director of the Union Heat & Light Company and the Slippery Rock Heat & Light Company of Slippery Rock; director of the Mountain Fuel Supply Company of Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah; and a director of the Devonian Oil Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Reno Oil Company of Sistersville, West Virginia; the Talon Fastener Company of Meadville, Pennsylvania; the Lightning Fastener Company of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, and many others. The scope and importance of these interests made him widely known throughout the petroleum and gas industries.
As well he had other claims upon the regard of his state. He was one of Pennsylvania's most prominent Masons, being affiliated in this order with Allegheny Lodge, No. 552, Free and Accepted Masons, at Emlenton; with Syria Temple of the Mystic Shrine in Pittsburgh, and with all higher bodies of the Scottish Rite, including the Consistory. In recognition of his long service in the order and his devotion to its ideals, he was elected to the honorary thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite, Masonry's greatest distinction. He was a Republican in politics and although he never entered public life, he gave effective support to many civic causes in Oil City and at Emlenton, where he continued to make his home. As a gift to the city in 1934 he built the Emlenton School, called Crawford Memorial School, in memory of his father and mother and wife. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Emlenton and was vice-president and trustee of Grove City College, an institution in which he was long actively interested, and whose administration building was dedicated in 1937 as Crawford Hall. [HNP, 48]
1 —, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 939.
2 Joseph Riesenman, Jr., History of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Vol. III (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., Inc., 1943), Pg 48.
3 Margaret Segui Kahle, Emlenton Cemetery Interments (Emlenton, PA: Self-published, 1977), Pg 22.
4 J. H. Newton, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Columbus, OH: J. A. Caldwell Publishers, 1879), Pg 548.
5 —, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 939, 967.
6 Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), Pg 507.
7 —, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 931, 967.
8 Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), Pg 837.
9 Venango Co, PA, Marriage License, #19709.
10
Joseph Riesenman, Jr., History of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Vol. III (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., Inc., 1943), Pg 42.
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