J. A. CRAIN is a well-known attorney of Freeport, whose ancestral history is of undisputed interest, and essentially as follows: The Crane family (spelled then in this manner) originated in England, where there are many of them, and where, it may be mentioned as a fact, there are disconnected records of them in the Herald’s College for over four centuries. In 1645 they first appeared in America, and in the course of time dispersed themselves along the Atlantic coast from New England to Georgia. The southern branch of this family altered the orthography of the name into Crain, much we suppose as Smith is thought to be improved by writing it Smythe, a harmless kind of prevarication, which, gratifying an innocent vanity, deceives no one as to the true origin of the name.

A part of the Crains, then, settled in Oglethorpe County, Ga., from whence some of the more adventurous younger generation, in the Indian War days, removed to Kentucky. In 1801 one of them, whose Christian name we are sorry to say we have forgotten, wishing to withdraw himself from, to his taste, the effete civilization with which he deemed himself hemmed in, with his family of nine girls and six boys again removed to where he had more elbow room, and where Indians were plenty, into what was then the Illinois Territory. He located in Randolph County, within a few miles of the old French trading-post of Kaskaskia, at that time the seat of the Territorial Government. Among his family were Milly, Thomas and Benjamin; Milly married Francis Garner, and in the course of time the discovery of the lead mines at Galena, where fortunes were supposed to be made suddenly, drew Thomas Crain and Francis Garner with their families into Northern Illinois, where Garner settled at Cherry Grove, in Carroll County, and Thomas Crain finally located at the place near Freeport which took the name of Crain’s Grove. Both of them in 1832 were volunteers in the Black Hawk War. After 1818, in which year Illinois became a State, John Crain, one of the sons of Benjamin, removed in 1827 to Washington County, where he resided till his death in 1872, and where he held the office of Sheriff, was in both houses of the State Legislature, and served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1848.

In 1830 in Covington, the then county seat of Washington County, and which had lately been the residence of Joseph Phillips, the first Chief Justice of Illinois, John Crain married Miss Anna Higgins, and they made their home in that place in the house of Judge Phillips, where was born to them, Jan. 8, 1831, their only child, the subject of this sketch. In 1833 the father of J. A. Crain entered a large body of land near Nashville, to which the county seat had been removed from Covington, and opened up a farm where he made his home until his death. Upon this farm the earlier days of J. A. Crain were spent; here he went through the usual experiences of farm life and district school, doing a good deal of desultory reading among a miscellaneous collection of books of which his father, for those days, had quite a library, up to the age of twelve, when it was his good fortune to be put under the tutelage of B. G. Roots, the pioneer educator of that region, and latterly, for many years, the venerable President of the Board of Education of our State, with whom he remained nearly three years, and to whose superior practical training, unsurpassed even at the present day, and to the methods of which, carried into his professional life, Mr. Crain owes whatever of success he may have had as a lawyer.

In 1849, through his own enterprise mainly, young Crain was appointed at the same time with the now Maj. Gen. John Schofield, a cadet to the United States Military Academy, at West Point, but owing to the strenuous opposition of friends to which he yielded resigned without ever having left home, a mistake and loss of opportunity for education he has ever since deeply regretted. He remained at home carrying on his father’s farm, getting such knowledge of books as he could, until 1854, when, resolving he would try and obtain a thorough legal education, he quitted (sic) the farm and entered the Harvard Law School at Cambridge, the oldest and then esteemed best in the country, where, after two years of close application he graduated in 1856 with the degree of L. B. Desiring, however, to further avail himself of the great advantages of the law school, he remained a third year as a post-graduate.

In 1857 Mr. Crain returned to Illinois, and having been admitted to the bar in February of that year, located in Freeport and commenced the practice of his chosen profession. Here for a period of over thirty years, he has been a diligent, close and unremitting student of the law, steadily building up a practice and reputation second to no attorney and counselor in his county. He has confined himself strictly to his professional duties, devoting himself to the interests of his clients, refusing to have anything whatever to do with politics. Many of his professional brethren, who began in Freeport about the same time, have been honored with offices both legislative and judicial, but Mr. Crain has never desired or sought an office at the hands of the public. His most intimate friends have been his law books, an association which with him partakes of the character of companionship. Of these he has the most costly and complete library of any lawyer in the State outside of the city of Chicago. It is especially valuable in a rare and useful collection of statutes, from the organization of the Indiana Territory, of which Illinois once formed a part, down to the present time, and the possession of which in a single instance, enabled him by illustrating the gradual change since 1805 of our criminal code to save a wrongly convicted client from the penitentiary. In March, 1887, Mr. Crain was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court at Washington. In 1860, at Freeport, Mr. Crain was married to Miss Vennette, eldest daughter of Hon. Martin P. Sweet, who in this part of Illinois is the most able and eloquent advocate ever at the bar. Of this union there were born five children – Kitty, John, Vennette S., Charles F. and Ethel G., the two eldest of whom died in infancy.

Transcribed by Carol Parrish
History of Stephenson County 1888 Portrait & Biographical Pg 361