Erastus Milo Cravath was born on July 01, 1833 at Homer, New York, United States. He was the eldest son of Oren Cravath, a prosperous farmer, and Betsey (Northway) Cravath. Early influences created in him a hatred of the institution of slavery and a deep sympathy for the slave. His father was one of three men to form an abolition party in Homer, and he also used his house as a station on the Underground Railroad.
As a youth in his teens Erastus attended for a year New York Central College, a poorly equipped institution founded by abolitionists. From Oberlin College he graduated in 1857 and three years later he completed the work of the theological seminary. In 1886 Cravath earned a Doctor in Divinity degree at Grinnell College.
Cravath became a pastor in the Congregational Church of Berlin Heights, Ohio. The Civil War affected his life profoundly. He became chaplain of the 101st Regiment of Ohio Volunteers in December 1863, served for the remainder of the war, and was mustered out in Nashville, Tennessee. Here he began the work of educating the freedmen to which he was to devote the remaining thirty-five years of his life.
For ten years, successively as field agent, as district secretary, and as field secretary of the American Missionary Association, he labored with missionary zeal and with notable success in raising money in the North and establishing and supervising schools fro African Americans in the South. One of these schools became Atlanta University; another became Fisk University, in Nashville. He was elected first president of this latter institution in 1875, but because of a tour of Europe with the famed Jubilee Singers of Fisk he did not assume active administration of its affairs until three years later.
His ideal of education for the colored race he once expressed in these words: “There must be thoroughly and liberally educated men and women of their own race to fill the high places of influence and responsibility in school and church, in business and professional life, if the masses are to be reached and uplifted”.
In 1857 Cravath married Ruthanna Jackson of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
