Howard Crosby Papers

Four-fifths of this collection of mostly letters received by Howard Crosby (1826-1891) equally from family members and a friend, T. Jarvis Carter, corresponds with a single, albeit formative phase of Howard's life between education and career--his sixteen-month, 1848-1849 European/Middle Eastern trip. The remaining one-fifth of the collection includes materials before and after this tour. This consists of poems and letters of encouragement during his university days at the City University of New York, a series of letters also received from Carter after Howard's return and an odd smattering of deeds, receipts and releases dating from Crosby's early years as a New York City pastor.

Rev. Crosby was born into a family of wealth and some Revolutionary War prominence. His father, William Bedlow Crosby (1786-1865), inherited a life of leisure from adoptive granduncle Henry Rutgers (Rutgers College namesake) who willed his nephew his valuable East River Manhattan holdings. Just as his elder brother William H., Howard was the recipient of a classical university education of Greek and Latin. Whereas William applied that career mostly towards law, Howard was more disposed towards theology and the ministry. Both brothers, however, devoted collectively twelve years to Rutgers College as Professors of Greek and Latin. Howard also assumed the chair of his retiring former professor at C.U.N.Y. for eight years prior to his four-year stint at Rutgers.

The letters Howard received from his family suggest the integral role religion played in their lives and the subsequent effect it would have on his. The other half of the letters from Carter, in contrast, betrays relgiion as mostly a social expediency in Clergyman Carter's life. This is not to say that all the Crosby family members registered the same high level of religious devotion. Mary, Howard's sister, is quite involved with moral literature and commentary and its circle of authors while brother John S. is a number-crunching attorney/businessman acknowledging God politely. The rest of the family falls somewhere in between.

All the family, which included a particluarly sparkly and articulate aunt, relished--what we must assume were decidedly perspicacious and robustly expressive--reportages from Howard. An early developing concensus within the family solicited more quantity from Howard's qualitative promise. As a result, Howard seems to have hit his stride near the last leg of his tour and derived a personal sense of meaning out of his sixteen-month journey, which he fixed within an enduring Christian devotion. The enthusiastic response from his "test audience" family probably convinced Howard his travels deserved a wider audience.

Carter's letters, in contrast to the healthy, stable relationship Howard shared with his family, present an unevenly demanding, disquieting one with Howard. Carter veers wildly between periods of uncontrolled effusion to those of darkest despondency. After returning from Europe, serving as a New York City pastor and moving to Cleveland, Carter finally seems to have been worn down by some sort of progressive venereal or urinary tract disease (judging from the graphic descriptions he furnished of his symptoms). Still Carter managed a shotgun wedding in the bitter end. The Crosby family had mixed feelings about Carter; Howard's concerned mother believed him at times "cracked in the brain," though the rest of the family was a bit more solicitous. While providing, to put it mildly, an interesting defiance of the family letters, the fact that Carter's letters yet amplify particular common themes conveys a contemporary relevancy and the value of this collection.

Carter displayed a noticeable mobility in moving along the margins of the Crosby family's life. He met up with Howard's entourage in Europe and subsequently called on almost all the members of the family. His frequent commutes between New Brunswick and New York City and the attendant comments imply a longstanding link between the two cities among some social circles, including that of the Crosbys. He garnered, at least, second-hand knowledge of the power struggle between the Board of Trustees at Rutgers and the parent synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1849 and comments on President Hasbrouck's resignation as well. Howard's brother, William H. Crosby, at the time, one of a handful of Rutgers faculty, also alludes to this affair as one too compounded and impacted to describe, but nevertheless sufficient to cause him to tender his own resignation. Carter also shared certain sentiments with family members (e.g., "New Brunswick just isn't what it used to be," and the precipitous gold rushers are setting themselves up for disappointment). Carter's choice of topics (when he isn't busy pining for a wife or a letter from Howard) reveals a common fascination with technology and politics and a similar coping mechanism relating to and necessitated by the constant immediacy of death and dying. Both Carter and Howard's aunt (even in more detail) celebrate the apparent success of an experimental lighter-than-air ship model and savor the imminent advent of speedy transatlantic travel. Zachary Taylor's election and inauguration escape neither Carter nor the Crosbys, and both supply Howard with amply running commentary. As a city pastor, Carter finds himself in the throes of a deadly cholera epidemic. The Crosbys, while acknowledging the outbreak, are busy reconciling themselves to the unrelated deaths of two of Howard's nieces.

Oddly enough, Carter, even as an American in 1848 Europe, fails to take notice of the monumental political upheavals of that year and their fundamental moral implications to most Americans. Tucked in between the family's social news, which dominate these correspondences throughout, is an interesting body of concerns and comments made possible by the Crosby family's extraordinary education and travel background (as the case with many upper-class Americans, the family had traveled Europe together earlier, as did the Crosby men separately as well). While the women of the family were marginally interested in the actual politics in Europe except as they pertained to the well-being of Howard's party, the men also envied them for being where the action was. They saw the revolutions of 1848 as manifestations of the fundamental struggle between republican freedom and monarchical tyranny--an inevitable clash Americans had successfully put behind them as would the Europeans when sufficiently ripened politically and morally. In the meantime Howard should enjoy watching the "scarlet lady" and her man the Pope scramble in Italy and keep a low American profile throughout the rest of Europe, for both government and revolutionaries can't comprehend American republicanism and feel threatened by it.

Howard made the most of is trip. Although he initially followed in the academic footsteps of his professor-brother, the fact that he took up the call to the ministry (while at Rutgers) and extended this life-long involvement into related endeavors in a prominent way, suggests that the correspondences of this collection helped settle in Howard's mind his sense of mission. For the rest of his life, Howard was able to convincingly meld sound academic theology with practical activism.

The Memorial Papers of Howard Crosby in the Rutgersensia as well as Howard's and William H's faculty files in the University Archives, provide substantial additional biographical material. Rev. Crosby's Lands of Moslem (1851) relates a portion of his tour and its significance to him, complementing these letters. Entries on Crosby are also readily accessible in most biographical and literary dictionaries. The manuscript collections of contemporary university presidents also contain some correspondence with Rev./Chancellor Crosby.