Erastus Milo Cravath (1833–1900) was field secretary with the American Missionary Association (AMA) after the American Civil War, when he helped found Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and numerous other historically black colleges in Georgia and Tennessee for the education of freedmen. He helped launch more than a generation into literacy and education. In addition, he served as president of Fisk University for more than 20 years.
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Erastus Milo Cravath was born July 1, 1833 in Homer, New York to Orin Cravath, of French Huguenot ancestry. The senior Cravath 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, Erastus grew up in a household devoted to the abolitionist cause and aiding escaping slaves.[1][2] It was a time and place of progressive causes.
Cravath first studied at the local common school, then Homer Academy. He went on to study at Oberlin College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1857, and earning a master's in divinity in 1860. After devoting much of his adult life to religion and education, in 1886 Cravath earned a Doctor in Divinity degree at Grinnell College.[3]
In September 1860 Cravath married Ruth Anna Jackson, who was from a long family of Quakers in Pennsylvania and England.
Cravath became a pastor in the Congregational Church of Berlin, Ohio, in what later became part of the United Church of Christ. He was an abolitionist. He entered the Union Army in December 1863, serving until the end of the war, including campaigns in Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee.[4]
By October 1865 Cravath 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, which he founded in 1866 together with John Ogden, superintendent of education for the Freedmen's Bureau in Tennessee; and the Reverend Edward P. Smith, also of the AMA. It accepted children and adults both for classes in reading, writing, math, etc. Within the first six months, the number of students climbed from 200 to 900.[5] Using Fisk as his base, Cravath also started freedmen's schools at Macon, Milledgeville and Atlanta, Georgia; and at various points in Tennessee.[6]
In September 1866, Cravath became District Secretary of the AMA in Cincinnati, Ohio. By 1870 he was promoted to Field Secretary at the AMA office in New York City.[7]
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 building campaign of the 1880s, and the steady expansion of education initiatives.[8]
Cravath lived in St. Charles, Minnesota in his last years, where he died in 1900.[9]