Memoir of Rev. Robert Crawford D.D.

(elder brother to Janet M. Crawford)
by Tracey Kirouac, Grande Prairie, Alberta

Located in collection of the Old Deerfield Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts
Call Number: M 922.5 C899r
Location: Microfilm Case
Memoir of Rev. Robert Crawford D.D. (elder brother to Janet M. Crawford)
Located in collection of the Old Deerfield Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts
Call Number: M 922.5 C899r
Location: Microfilm Case
Author: Crawford, Robert, 1804-1896.
Title: Reverend Robert Crawford diaries, 1845-1892
Variant Title: Robert Crawford diaries
Table of Contents: Reel 1. 1845-1867, Voyage to Europe, 1852, 1892
Reel 2. Memoir, 1889.

MEMOIR

Deerfield, Mass. Feb. 18, 1889

It may be regarded as a dangerous thing for a man to write any lengthy Memoir of himself. In the attempt he may be ever so sincere & truthful, but there is the risk on the one hand of indulging in a measure self-adulation; or guarding against this, he may be restrained too much & depreciative in speaking of himself. Avoiding Scylla; he may run against Charibdis. The medium course is the only safe one, but the tendency will be to the one or the other extreme.

Notwithstanding, I am about to enter upon such an undertaking. I do so with the hope & earnest desire of being divinely directed, so that I may write wisely & in accordance with truth & fact. I feel the more the need of such direction & help because, now some months along in my 85th year, I must write in part at least from memory, going back to my earliest years. I have indeed at hand an accumulation of writings, begun more than fifty years ago with the purpose of making some new record at least once a week, but often interrupted for months & even years at a time. These records were laid aside as first written, & have not been looked over until very lately. If preserved at all they need to be emended & supplemented, & pruned not a little.

But why, at this late day, do anything with these records? Why not if anyone may choose to read or spell them out, let them go just as they are? But they are written with many contractions & symbols of my own devising which make it difficult, if not impossible reading to anyone not accustomed to their use.

And now, in my old age, my children are anxious that I should leave for them some memoir of myself, especially of my early life. And they are the more so from the fact that the first sixteen years of my life were spent in Scotland, my native country, & the next five or six years in Canada, among peoples whose manners & ways differ in many things from those to which we are accustomed.
To my dear children, therefore, from whose love & care I must soon pass away, I dedicate these records as a token of my love, & my earnest desire that Heaven’s blessings, in temporal & in spiritual things, may abound to them every one, now and for evermore. God grant this to them all.

Robert Crawford