Background
Frank Armstrong Crawford was born on January 18, 1839 in Mobile, Alabama to Robert Leighton Crawford (1799—1853) and Martha Eliza Everett (1820—1898). Her parents chose her name before she was born, not knowing she would be a girl.
Frank Armstrong Crawford was born on January 18, 1839 in Mobile, Alabama to Robert Leighton Crawford (1799—1853) and Martha Eliza Everett (1820—1898). Her parents chose her name before she was born, not knowing she would be a girl.
Growing up in Mobile, she attended Saint Francis Street Methodist Church.
She was also the widow of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. After the American Civil War of 1861-1865, she moved to New York City with her mother, even though she supported the Confederate States of America. Augusta Jane Evans (1835-1909) described her as a "zealous Methodist."
Philanthropy
Cornelius saw this gift as an olive branch to the South, after he had helped defeat the Confederate States Army with his United States Ship Vanderbilt during the Civil War.
However, he never visited the university.
Personal life
She was briefly married to John Elliott, but quickly divorced. He was her mother"s cousin.
She signed a pre-nuptial agreement, agreeing to receive $500,000 in bonds after his death, a great sum at the time but a fraction of Vanderbilt"s fortune. Braxton Bragg (1817—1876) was at the wedding.
Death
She died on May 4, 1885 in New York City.
Her funeral was conducted by the Review Charles Deems in the Church of the Strangers, a church for Southerners in New York that she attended regularly. She was buried in the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp on Staten Island.
Crawford Hall, one of the ten houses on the Martha Rivers Ingram Commons at Vanderbilt University, was named in her honor.