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By
Mabel Thacher Rosemary Washburn
Genealogical Editor of The Journal of American History;
Secretary of The National Historical Society
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As Published in:The Journal of American
History, Vol. XII, No. 3, Third Quarter, 1918
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The surname of Crawford, which represents the family
that, ever since the period of the Norman |
| Conquest, has held so high a place and achieved
such historic distinction in the chronicles of Scotland, is derived
from the Barony of Crawford in Lanarkshire. The place-name is given,
by etymologists, two meanings, the cattle-pass, and the pass of blood,
the latter apparently the correct meaning. As to the inhabitants or
possessors of the land prior to the latter half of the Eleventh Century,
nothing is known. There is a tradition that one of the ancient Celtic
settlers of Scotland, Mackornock, in a fierce battle of the olden
time, discovered a ford or pass and thus gained an advantage for his
side in the conflict which won them the victory. But this has not
proved capable of definite connection with the designation of Crawford. |
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The clear pedigree of the family begins with one
Leofwine, whose birth-date cannot be placed much |
| later than the year 1000. He was evidently of Danish
blood or ancestry, and lived probably in that part of England known
a thousand years ago as Northumberland, which then included a far
larger territory than the present English County of the name, Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Durham being then a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria,
in which the Danish element was strong among the population, and over
which, up to the Norman Conquest, Dane-English Earls ruled as practically
independent sovereigns. The part of Northumberland in which Leofwine
lived was perhaps Yorkshire, for in the Domesday Survey of William
the Conqueror, made in 1086, there are many references to Tor or Thor
who may have been the "Thor Longus,"--Thor the Tall,--who was the
son of this Leofwine. Scottish antiquarians in the Eighteenth Century
had discovered the Existence of Thor Longus as an ancestor of the
Crawford family; but that he was the son of Leofwine is first made
known in this present paper, and, for that reason, the evidence of
the relationship is herewith
given at some length. |
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There is preserved in the archives of the Cathedral
of Durham, among the documents of the reign |
| of King Edgar, the following Charter given to the
Cathedral by Thor Longus, ancestor of the second known generation
of all the Crawfords of Scotland and America. |
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Omnibus sanctae matris Ecclesiae filiis
Thor Longus in Domine salutem. Sciatis quod Edgarus Dominus meus,
Rex Scottarum, dedid |
| mihi AEdnaham desertam, quam eto, suo
auxilio et mea propria pecunia, inhabitavi, et ecclesiam in honorem
sancti Cuthberti fabricavi, quam ecclesiam cum una carrucata terrae
Deo et sancto Cuthberto et monachis equs in perpetuum possidendam
dedi; hanc igitur donationem feci pro anima domini mei Regis Edgari
et pro animabur patris et matris illius et pro redemptione Lefwine
patris mei dilectissimi et pro meimet ipsius tam corporis quam animae
salute, et siquis hanc meam donationem sancto predicto et monachis
sibi servientibus aliqua vi vel ingenio aufere presumserit, suferat
ab eo Deo omnipotens vitam Regni celestis, ut cum diabolo et angelis
ejus poenas sustineat eternas. Amen. |
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This Charter confirms by a formal statement the fact
that Edgar, King of Scotland, gave to Thor |
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Longus the land of Ednaham, then
a waste, unsettled place, which Thor Longus, partly by his own means
and partly by the aid of others, colonized, and on which he built
a church, dedicated to God and saint Cuthbert, which church, together
with one "carrucate" of land--about
one hundred acres--he gave in perpetuity to the
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