Rev. Erastus Milo Cravath, D.D.

Erastus Milo Cravath, Sr.

Find A Grave Memorial ID # 5991868

Erastus M. Cravath was born on this date in He was a white-American abolitionist, educator, Chaplin, University founder and administrator.

Erastus Milo Cravath was born in 1833 in Homer, Cortland County, New York to Orin Cravath, of a French man 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, 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.

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 Heights, 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. 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 accepted children and adults both for classes in various subjects, 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 started freedmen's schools at Macon, Milledgeville, and 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 building campaign of the 1880s, and the steady expansion of education initiatives. Erastus Cravath lived in St. Charles, Minnesota in his last years, where he died in 1900.

Military Service

Civil War Union Army Chaplain. Served during the Civil War as Chaplain of the 101st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Served with Company G, 101st Ohio Infantry and the Ohio F&S as Chaplain.
Enlisted on January 2, 1864 at the age of 36.
Promoted to F & S Chaplain on January 7, 1864.
Mustered out with the company on June 12, 1865.

Erastus Milo Cravath – Preacher, Educator, Veteran, Honoring Vets, Memorial Affairs, Veterans Legacy Program, US Veterans Administration

Additional Resources

Special collections in the Erastus Milo Cravath Memorial Library, Fisk University, 1967

Describing (and sometimes picturing) the various manuscript collections and institutional records held at the University's archives: the Negro Collection, the Fiskiana Collection, the American Missionary Association Archives, the papers of Charles W. Chestnutt, Jean Toomer, E. R. Alexander, Scott Joplin, Countee Cullen, Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, and announcing the recent acquisitions of manuscripts of Charles S. Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois and Edwin R. Embree among others.

National Park Service Awards Fisk $500K to Preserve Historic Cravath Hall on July, 15, 2022

“I am so excited about our historic preservation project and Fisk University’s selection as one of twenty-one historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to receive funding from the National Park Service (NPS) Department of Interior. Fisk University has always been committed to the preservation and maintenance of this historic building, and this is the next logical step towards long-term preservation and rehabilitation of the book tower space for future adaptable reuse,” said Acting Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Principal Investigator for the grant Dr. Brandon A. Owens, Sr.

Fisk University Receives $3 Million Gift From Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP on June 15, 2021

Fisk University’s founders included noted abolitionist Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, whose son, Paul Drennan Cravath, would go on to become a named partner in the Firm. Erastus Cravath served as the first President of the University, a role he held for more than two decades, raising his family on the grounds of the Fisk campus. Sharing his father’s passion for the mission of the school, Paul Cravath served in various leadership roles at Fisk for 45 years. In 2019, Fisk and Cravath established the Cravath Scholars Program, supporting high-achieving students studying across a range of disciplines with tuition assistance and a summer internship in Cravath’s New York office.

Fisk University

Fisk University was founded when American Missionary Association field agent Erastus Milo Cravath and John Ogden of the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission (WFAC) secured Union barracks in Nashville and money to be used for a school for freedmen from Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner Clinton B. Fisk. The school opened in 1866 with an attendance of about one thousand children, and was formally chartered the following year. After the WFAC disbanded, it transferred its interest in Fisk to the AMA.

Adam K. Spence succeeded John Ogden as dean in 1870. In 1871, University Treasurer George L. White organized the Fisk Jubilee Singers in order to raise capital for the expansion of the school. Between 1871 and 1875, the troupe earned about $40,000 in New England and $110,000 in Europe.

E. M. Cravath was installed as president in 1875 and served until 1901. The decades of the 1870s-1890s saw considerable growth of the school. Jubliee Hall was constructed on the site of a new campus in 1876. Livingstone Missionary Hall was opened in 1882, and a gymnasium and manual training shop opened in 1888. The 1890s saw the construction of Theological Hall (1891), Fisk Memorial Chapel (1892), and an elementary teacher training school in 1895. An Andrew Carnegie library later opened in 1908.

Fayette Avery McKenzie was appointed president in 1901. He was removed from the presidency as a result of pressure by W.E.B. Du Bois and others in 1925. Thomas Elsa Jones succeeded McKenize as president. Under his leadership, Fisk became the first predominantly African American university to be accredited with an "A" rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

The decades of the 1930s and 1940s again saw growth of Fisk, with the Erastus Milo Cravath Memorial Library opening in 1930 and a chemistry building following the next year. Fisk's annual Festivals of Music and Art also began in 1930. The International Student Center was completed in 1945, and the Alfred Steiglitz Collection of Modern Art opened in the Carl Van Vechten Gallery of Fine Arts in 1949.