Researching William Crawford

William Monod Crawford's father was a wealthy linen manufacturer. He was born in Paris on 31 October 1872, living there until he was sixteen when the family returned to Ireland. He served in the Indian Civil Service from 1895 to 1919, in which year he returned to Ireland in 1919 to live in Belfast. After 1919, he undertook various contracts for the Dunlop Rubber Company mainly in Burma. During his years in India and Burma, Crawford collected Lepidoptera.

Between 1921 and his death, Crawford was a prolific author of notes on Irish insects. His main interests were Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. Many of his notes concerned migrant moths and butterflies, and he documented the occurrences of several rare hawk moths including the only Northern Ireland record of Hippotion celerio also known as the silver-striped hawk-moth. He discovered the small eggar in Fermanagh in 1928. He also amassed a large collection of Irish Coleoptera. He specialised in the Dytiscidae.

His extensive collection of butterflies from the Indian sub-continent is in the Ulster Museum, Belfast. His beetle collection, merged with that of William Frederick Johnson, is in the same repository.

He died on 2 April 1941, aged 69. An obituary appeared in the Irish Naturalists' Journal.

Crawford was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1760. He received a liberal schooling, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1781 received his degree. He emigrated to the United States and settled near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He purchased a farm on Marsh Creek in 1785, where he spent the rest of his life practicing medicine. He was an associate judge for Adams County, Pennsylvania, from 1801 to 1808.

Crawford was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh and to the three succeeding Congresses. He again resumed the practice of medicine near Gettysburg where he died in 1823. Interment in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg.

Crawford was born in London to Andrew Crawford (1745–1800), formerly of Dunfermline, and his wife Mary, one of 21 daughters of the Spink family living near Northallerton, Yorkshire. The family lived at Brighton from 1783, where Andrew Crawford was Postmaster of Brighton (then "Brighthelmston").

William Crawford spent his early career with the Honourable East India Company and made a fortune in India. He returned to England in around 1812, and was a partner in the East India Mercantile House (i.e. trading company) of Crawford, Colvin and Company. (See the Colvin family for more on the Anglo-Indian links.) He bought the estate of Pippbrook, near Dorking, Surrey in 1817 and made it his country home. From 1824 until his death, Crawford was a director of the Australian Agricultural Company. In 1827 he was High Sheriff of Surrey.

He had a house at Eaton Square, in the fashionable West End of London. He was a director of the Alliance Assurance Company and an alderman of the City of London in the Spectacle Makers' Company. In 1832 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament at Brighton at the general election in 1832, the first after the Reform Act. He was returned as Member of Parliament for the City of London in August 1833, and sat until he lost the seat in the Tory swing of June 1841. He was in favour of the abolition of the window tax and opposed the Corn Laws and short parliaments. He died at Woodmansterne, Surrey and was buried in St Peter's Church there.

Crawford married Dorothy Elizabeth Rees at Bombay on 11 January 1802. Five children were born in Bombay, and three in England. His son Robert Wigram Crawford was also MP for the City of London. His daughter Jane married Henry Ray Freshfield, and as Jane Freshfield wrote travelogues about mountaineering in the Swiss Alps.

Crawford was born at Cullercoats Northumberland and worked in Hartley Coal Mines from the age of 10. In 1862 he actively opposed the attempt of the Northumberland mine owners to impose the system of yearly hiring. He became Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association in 1863, and spoke frequently at the Durham Miner's Gala He was briefly secretary of the breakaway Northumberland Miners' Mutual Confident Association. In 1885 Crawford was elected Member of Parliament for Mid Durham and held the seat until his death aged 57. From 1889 to 1890 he was a member of the Institute of Mining Engineers. Crawford was a chief promoter of the College of the Venerable Bede, Durham and acted as its treasurer until his death.

He was born in South Leeds, Canada West, the son of John Crawford. Crawford came to Manitoba in 1871 as an assistant surveyor. In 1875, he became a Dominion Lands Surveyor. He was hired in 1877 by the federal government as a valuator of the Canadian Pacific Railway right-of-way. Crawford was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the Manitoba assembly in 1879 before being elected in 1883. He also served as Swamp Lands Commissioner for Manitoba.

He later farmed in the Dauphin area. Crawford established a sawmill in partnership with David Howard Harrison. He was a prominent member of the Masons. Crawford died in Dauphin.