William Crawford (ca. 1722–11 June 1782), Continental army and militia officer, was born probably either in Westmoreland County or in the lower Shenandoah Valley in the part of Orange County that in 1738 became Frederick County. His father's name was almost certainly William Crawford; his mother's name appears in various records as Honor, Honoria, or Onora Crawford. After his father died, his mother married Richard Stephenson, and Crawford grew up on his stepfather's Bullskin Run farm in the part of Frederick County that later became Jefferson County. In 1742 Crawford married Ann Stewart, who died sometime after the birth of their daughter. He married Hannah Vance in 1744. They had one son and two daughters who lived to adulthood. In 1750 George Washington purchased land along Bullskin Run, and most likely Crawford met him at that time.

On 27 December 1755, during the Seven Years' War, Crawford was commissioned an ensign in Christopher Gist's scouts, organized as the 17th Company in the Virginia Regiment, commanded by Colonel George Washington. He took his oath on 6 January 1756 at the Frederick County Court session but was allowed to postpone joining his company until the beginning of March. Initially the regiment protected the settlements along the northern Virginia, Maryland, and south-central Pennsylvania frontier from attacks by the French and their Indian allies. After the regiment was reduced from seventeen to ten companies in May 1757 and its troops redistributed, Crawford began garrison duty on the Augusta County frontier. On 27 July he received a lieutenant's commission and the following year served in Brigadier General John Forbes's expedition against Fort Duquesne. Crawford continued in the service until the British victory in 1763 and returned to active duty during Pontiac's Rebellion. By the close of the war he had achieved the rank of captain.

Like many other veterans who served on the Allegheny frontier, Crawford was drawn to the lands near the Forks of the Ohio, a region claimed by both Virginia and Pennsylvania. By 1766 he had established his family near the Stewart's Crossing settlement on the Youghiogheny River. At first lying within Augusta County, the settlement became part of the District of West Augusta and was later organized as part of Yohogania County. Crawford surveyed and purchased additional tracts. George Washington secretly enlisted him as a land agent in September 1767 to acquire tracts in the Ohio Valley. After his initial surveys, Crawford conferred with Washington during a six-day visit at Mount Vernon in April 1768. Resuming the periodic surveying trips on Washington's behalf that lasted until 1773, he returned to Mount Vernon on several occasions to discuss strategy and met with Washington when he traveled west. The two men corresponded about western lands until 1781. Beginning in 1771 Crawford conducted extensive surveys for the Virginia government of western lands set aside for the Virginia Regiment.

In July 1770 Crawford was appointed a justice of the peace for Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and he likely held similar offices when that county was divided into others, including Westmoreland County, in 1773. In the latter year he became official surveyor for the Ohio Company of Virginia. In 1774 Crawford volunteered for service in the campaign of Virginia's royal governor, John Murray, the fourth earl of Dunmore, against the Shawnee Indians. During Dunmore's War, Crawford helped erect Fort Fincastle at what became Wheeling, conducted scouting operations, and led an attack against two Indian villages located above the Ohio River. The presence of the Virginia governor at the Forks exacerbated tensions with Pennsylvania, and in the squabble Crawford sided with Virginia. Appointed a justice of the peace for Augusta County on 6 December 1774, he took the oath of office on 16 May 1775, the same day he was selected for the county's committee formed in response to the deepening crisis with Great Britain.

The fourth Virginia Revolutionary Convention raised troops for service in the Revolutionary War and on 12 January 1776 commissioned Crawford lieutenant colonel of the 5th Virginia Regiment. Beginning on 14 August of that year he served as colonel in the 7th Virginia Regiment. For equipping that unit he received $20,000 in compensation from the Continental Congress. Crawford may have been present with elements of the regiment at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, but by March 1777 he had relinquished his command because of concerns about Indian attacks at the Forks of the Ohio and his need to settle the estate of his deceased brother. Back in western Pennsylvania, Crawford took command of Continental troops and militiamen in the western department and in the spring of 1778 constructed Fort Crawford northeast of Pittsburgh.

Although much of Crawford's time was taken up with frontier defense, in December 1776 he was named a justice of the peace for Yohogania County. Crawford may also have signed a document prepared at the September 1780 session of the county court petitioning the Continental Congress to create a separate state in the region.

The war in the west intensified as British agents from Fort Detroit provided supplies to Indian allies, principally the Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware, and urged them to escalate their attacks on American settlements. In response to a series of raids during the winter of 1781–1782, Colonel David Williamson mounted a militia expedition. In March 1782 he launched a surprise attack on Gnadenhutten, a village of about a hundred Delaware, converts to Moravian Christianity. Williamson's men killed nearly all of the inhabitants, many of them old men, women, and children, and destroyed the village. Authorities in Virginia and Pennsylvania denounced the attack, but Ohio Valley Indians stepped up their raids. Crawford was elected to command a retaliatory strike against the Sandusky River Indian villages. His expedition comprised approximately 500 Virginia and Pennsylvania volunteers, among whom were Williamson and other veterans of the Gnadenhutten massacre. Anticipating a perilous campaign, Crawford made out his will on 16 May 1782, before departing. On 4 June his force engaged the Indians, but faced with a reinforced enemy the next day, he ordered a retreat after nightfall. During the withdrawal Crawford became separated from his command and with several other men was captured by Delawares. Nearly all were killed; William Crawford was burned with black powder and coals, beaten, and scalped before his death on 11 June 1782. Two prisoners escaped. Their account of Crawford's gruesome torture and death appeared the next year in a pamphlet entitled Narratives of a Late Expedition Against the Indians with an Account of the Barbarous Execution of Col. Crawford. Reprinted several times, the survivors' tale conferred on Crawford a lasting distinction in the chronicles of border warfare.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lyman C. Draper Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis., MSS 3D87–94, with dates and places of birth and death, and James H. Anderson, "Colonel William Crawford," Ohio Archæological and Historical Publications 6 (1898): 1–34 (frontispiece portrait); C. W. Butterfield, ed., The Washington-Crawford Letters. Being the Correspondence Between George Washington and William Crawford, from 1767 to 1781, Concerning Western Lands (1877); Butterfield, Washington-Irvine Correspondence … (1882); numerous references in Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington (1976–1979) and W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series (1983–1995), Philander D. Chase, W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series (1985– ), and W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series (1992–1997); Frederick Co. Order Book, 7:8; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), 3:137, 5:392; Francis B. Heitman, ed., Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, rev. ed. (1914), 177; Hugh Henry Brackenridge, ed., Narratives of a Late Expedition Against the Indians with an Account of the Barbarous Execution of Col. Crawford; and the Wonderful Escape of Dr. Knight and John Slover from Captivity in 1782 (1783), esp. 9–13; Butterfield, An Historical Account of the Expedition against Sandusky Under Col. William Crawford in 1782 (1873); Grace U. Emahiser, From River Clyde to Tymochtee and Col. William Crawford (1969); transcription of will, Accession 25781, Library of Virginia.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Leonard J. Sadosky.

How to cite this page:
Leonard J. Sadosky, "William Crawford (1722–1782)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 ({url}, accessed [today's date]).

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