Background
Charles Nelson Crittenton was born and brought up on a farm in Henderson, Jefferson County, New York. He was of English and Welsh ancestry, the son of Harvey and Phoebe (Matteson) Crittenton.
distributor manufacturer philanthropist
Charles Nelson Crittenton was born and brought up on a farm in Henderson, Jefferson County, New York. He was of English and Welsh ancestry, the son of Harvey and Phoebe (Matteson) Crittenton.
He was educated in the common schools, and began his business career as a clerk in the village store.
When twenty-one years old he went to New York to make his fortune, and succeeded. First he was office boy for an undertaker, the sexton of St. George’s Church; then bookkeeper, cashier, and salesman for W. H. Dunham, later being taken into the firm, which was known as Dunham, Crittenton & Company.
In 1861 he withdrew and with sixty dollars capital started a drug business in a little back room on Sixth Ave. Ultimately this became the Charles N. Crittenton Company, capitalized at $800, 000.
With his wife he was confirmed in St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in 1874, but did not “experience conversion” until after the death of his four- year-old daughter Florence in 1882.
Almost immediately he became active in evangelistic and mission work, especially in rescue work for women, and soon retired as the active head of his business in order to give all his time to service.
He traveled about continually, visiting these missions and engaging in evangelistic activities, using for a time a special car which he purchased, named the “Good News. ”
His death occurred in a hotel at San Francisco, and he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.
Fie left one-half of his estate to the work to which he had previously given liberally of liis income.
With others he formed an organization for saving unfortunate women, named after his daughter the Florence Mission, which opened at 27 Bleecker St. , April 19, 1883. Similar institutions were started elsewhere, so that at the time of his death there were more than sixty in this country and five abroad. In 1895 they were combined under the charter of the corporation known as The National Florence Crittenton Mission, of which he was president until his death. Through the work he started, which has continued, his influence has been important and extensive.
His autobiography, entitled The Brother of Girls (1910), reveals a shrewd business man, rather well satisfied with himself, limited in outlook and interests, emotional, sentimental, of naive religious faith, entirely governed in his later years by the evangelistic motive.
In 1859 he married Josephine Slosson of Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania.
