Lyon County, Kansas 

Hon. Samuel J. Crawford

(Emporia)

Samuel J. Crawford was born in Lawrence county, Indiana, on April 15, 1835.  The experiences of a farm and the training of a common school furnished him with the rudiments of all that he has since attained and achieved.  He is now forty-four years of age, and has commanded troops in the field, guided the councils of a State, expounded the laws of a nation, and might be called upon at any moment to resume the onerous duties that have before now been so ably discharged.

Mr. Crawford read law at an early age, in the office of the Hon. G. W. Short, of Bedford, Indiana, and was admitted to the bar in 1856, when only twenty-one years of age.  Not content with his own attainments, the young lawyer pursued his studies diligently, as we find him, in 1858, entered as a student in the law school of Cincinnati College, Ohio, from which institution he graduated in 1858, and came to Kansas in the following year, establishing himself in the practice of his profession at Garnett city, in the county of Anderson. When the first state Legislature was convened at Topeka, after the admission of Kansas to the Union, in March, 1861, Mr. Crawford was a member of that body and served until the 5^th of May, a term of rather less than six weeks; as at that time he resigned his seat to volunteer for service in the field.  Returning to Garnett city, he organized a company of volunteers and was commissioned as their captain.  The air was full of rumors, and it was already certain that there would be work for the manhood of the Union, on many a blood field, before the quarrel could be ended.

Within nine days from his resignation at Topeka, Captain Crawford had been assigned to the 2d Kansas Volunteer Infantry, and it will be remembered that his regiment won distinction almost immediately after its organization.  The record of the regiment is a muster roll of heroes.  The campaign under General Lyon in Missouri was participated in by the Kansas 2d, and they found like veterans at Wilson’s Creek, where Lyon fell mortally wounded on August 10, 1861.  The regiment was mustered out and reorganized as cavalry, in which arm of the service Captain Crawford was assigned to the command of a battalion and took part in the battles fought against the rebels by Generals Blunt and Schofield in Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory. The command of the second regiment devolved on Colonel Crawford in 1863, and immediately afterward the Secretary of War commissioned him as colonel of a colored regiment attached to the 7^th Army Corps under General Steele.  The expedition into southern Arkansas was partly make up of our Kansa contingent as readers of our war record will bear in mind, and Colonel Crawford’s men, like their leader, behaved well.  The expedition from Fort Smith through Indian Territory was led by Colonel Crawford in July, 1864, and in October we find the same officer commended for gallantry in the campaign in Missouri against General Price.  The month following that raid saw Colonel Crawford elected Governor of Kansas, and resigning his commission in December, he returned home to be inaugurated in January, 1865, the year of the end of the war.  Two years of office being near their expiration, Governor Crawford was re-elected in the fall of 1866 and served a second term of office with profit to the State.

In the fall of 1868 a band of marauding Indians having swooped down upon the frontier of the State and carried away captive a number of white women and children, the Governor at once organized a regiment of cavalry and pursued the redskins, a compound of Arapahoes, Cheyennes,Kiowas and Comanches into their own country, through the western portion of the Indian Terriroty and into northwestern Texas.  The expedition was vigorous and successful, but the whole of the winter and spring were occupied in the chase before the Governor had the felicity to secure the object of his search.  It is satisfactory to know that the Indians were made so completely aware of their defeat that they surrendered all their prisoners, and have not since ventured upon any such raid in this State.  The joy of the relatives and friends who waited and watched for the return of the captives cannot be described and may not be easily imagined.

Relieved at length from a succession of public duties, Governor Crawford resumed the practice of his profession in Emporia, the capital of Lyon county, in a neighborhood which abounds with society of the type best fitted to appreciate his good qualities, and where trade, manufactures, mining and agriculture prosperously combined, afford him an excellent field for the development of his ability as an advocate.  There is no difficulty in placing a man of such steadfastness as Governor Crawford.

The Republican party was just beginning to command attention when he attained his majority, and he has fought under the same banner all his life, voting for Fremont when there seemed little probability that a Republican would ever be president of the United States, then twice for Abraham Lincoln, and afterward for General Grant.

With all the multiplicity of engagements with friends, and with the enemy, during the busy and eventful career just hurriedly sketched, it is satisfactory to know that the Governor found time for an engagement will more engrossing than all the others, one that will probably only end with his life: He was married on November 27, 1866, to Miss Belle Chase, of Topeka, the capital of Kansas.

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler – “The United States Biographical Dictionary Kansas 1878”)