Elizabeth
Perkins Crouch 1791-1873
She was my great
great great grandmother, and this picture is my prize, the only one I have
of someone born in the eighteenth century. She came from an old New
England family which had been in upstate New York for a time.
The details are not very clear, probably because her father, who was a
Methodist minister, moved around frequently.
Elizabeth Perkins married
Jonathan Crouch (1771-1826) in Crawford County, PA, in 1815. They
had six children, Delos Mason Crouch 1816-1873; Charlotte Kasiah Crouch 1820-1853;
Lavina Crouch 1822-1876 (my great great grandmother), who married Henry Lupher;
Isaac Newton Crouch (1823, died in infancy), Alsina Crouch 1824-1852; and Mary Delia Crouch
1826-1892). When Mary Delia was five days old, Jonathan Crouch
was killed felling a tree. The story told by Elizabeth's greatgrandaughter,
Nellie Taylor Nelson, who remembered her, is that some of her neighbors
then came to her and said "You will have to give away some of these children,
you cannot support them." Elizabeth said, "NO! I will not give
away any of my children.", and she became a 'tailoress' and supported them
herself, apparently adequately since all five living at the time lived
to grow up.
Another family
story about Elizabeth is that she once mended the trousers of the famous
abolitionist John Brown. While this is not the sort of thing
that one can rigourously prove, it is a well-documented fact that John
Brown lived in Crawford County for about 10 years, during the 1830s (before
he became famous). He lived and ran a tannery near Townville, less
than a mile from where Elizabeth lived. Townville was and is
a very small place and can't have had very many 'tailoresses', so she would
certainly have been the logical person for the job.
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