Author: James Arthur DeGroff Jr.
William Crawford met George Washington in 1749 and became close friends when Washington was surveying lands for Lord Halifax. Washington often stayed at the Crawford cabin on his trips to this region. Washington taught Crawford how to survey and years later Crawford surveyed lands for him in the Ohio Valley.

Crawford and Washington served together in the Braddock and Forbe’s Expeditions. After Pontiac’s War in 1763, Crawford, with some slaves, cleared a tract of 376 acres of land at Stewart’s Crossing on Braddock’s Road where he built a cabin and trading post in what is today Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

Commissioned a captain in Lord Dunsmore’s War on May 8, 1774, Crawford was later promoted to major and led 500 men to destroy two of three Mingo Indian villages supposedly responsible for harassing settlers on the frontier. Several white captives were rescued and Indian prisoners were taken.

In the American Revolution, Crawford led Virginia Regiments in the Battles of Long Island, Trenton and Princeton and was nearly captured at the Battle of Brandywine. He also fought at Germantown.

In 1779, Crawford led some small expeditions into the Ohio Country to punish the Indians for raids on the Pennsylvania frontier. Again in 1782, Crawford’s neighbors and General Irvine persuaded him to lead a force of 480 volunteers into the Indian lands of Upper Sandusky, Ohio to try to wipe out the Indian threat to the Pennsylvania frontier settlements. After a long march and some minor skirmishes, Crawford’s forces became separated and surrounded by the enemy in the deep forest and began a retreat when Col. Crawford, thinking his son, John, had been captured, ventured back with a small detachment of men and was surrounded and captured. The Indians took their eight or so captives to a Delaware village called Half King’s town where he and the other prisoners were painted black (representing death). All of the other prisoners were tomahawked and scalped except for Dr. Knight and Col. Crawford.

Crawford’s death would be at Tymochtee Creek where Dr. Knight, a British officer, along with renegade whites Simon Gertie and Matthew Elliott witnessed Crawford’s cruel torture and would later speak about it. Stripped naked and barefoot, Crawford had a rope tied around his hands and his neck with the other end tied to a post in the center of a pile of burning wood embers. From this he was forced to walk back and forth on the hot coals around the post by squaws and young boys who prodded him with burning sticks. A brave cut off both of Crawford’s ears and then his eyes were put out with sticks and he was scalped, but he still was not dead and he begged for his life to the white men who were present but who refused to interfere with this Indian ceremony. After about two hours of torture he finally died when burning coals were placed upon his scalped head and his knees dropped into the hot coals and he was roasted alive.

The next day Dr. Knight, a small thin man, was to be taken by a big Indian brave to a Shawnee village some miles away where the same type of ceremony was to be performed on him but he caught his captor from behind by surprise and knocked him out with some firewood and escaped on June 13, 1782 to tell the story of Crawford’s cruel death. His death was widely publicized stirring up much anti-Indian hatred and Dr. Knight wrote at length about the ordeal. It is recorded that when Washington heard of Crawford’s death, he wept.