Joseph Halsey Crane

Who was Joseph Halsey Crane?

Joseph Halsey Crane was an attorney, soldier, jurist, and legislator. He was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey He was the son of General Wiliam Crane and Abigail Crane and the grandson of Stephen Crane, member of the First Continental Congress, his brother was Colonel Ichabod B. Crane.

Joseph Crane was a student at Princeton College. He studied law with Governor Aaron Ogden and was admitted to the bar of New Jersey in 1802 and practiced there briefly. He went to Dayton, Ohio in 1804 and became the first attorney to practice in there. Crane took on Daniel C. Cooper as a client.

In 1809, Joseph Halsey Crane married Julia Ann Elliott, the daughter of one of Dayton’s first doctors, Dr. John Elliott, who was a surgeon in the United States Army during the Revolution and had been at Vincennes, Indiana with General "Mad Anthony" Wayne and General Arthur St. Clair. Joseph and Julia had a large family, but most of the children, like Ann, died young. Two sons, William Elliott Crane and Joseph Graham Crane, followed their father into the legal profession. His son Joseph, brevetted a major in the Army of the Potomac for his participation in the Second Battle of Bull Run, later became mayor of Jackson, Mississippi during the Reconstruction era in the south. He was stabbed to death by a former colonel in the Confederate Army named Edward M. Yerger.