Howard Crosby

• Howard Crosby
• Born: February 27, 1826
• Died: March 29, 1891

Presbyterian minister, temperance reformer, classicist, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, was born in New York City, the son of William Bedlow and Harriet (Ashton) Crosby. The family held an illustrious place in the new America; one of Crosby’s great-grandfathers, William Floyd, had been a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and another, Joseph Crosby, was a Massachusetts judge. His father had inherited a fortune through a brother, Col. Henry Rutgers, for whom Rutgers College was named.

Crosby learned Greek at the age of six and entered New York University at fourteen, being graduated in 1844, at the age of eighteen, with honors in Greek. To build up his weak health, he spent some time out of the city working on and helping to run a farm owned by his father. In 1847 he married Margaret E. Givan and spent the next three years abroad.

Returning to New York City, Crosby joined the faculty of New York University as professor of Greek; that same year, 1851, he published his first book, Lands of the Moslem. He taught at New York University until 1859, and during this time his interest in larger social and civic issues developed—an interest expressed at first through the Bible class he taught for young boys and through his work in organizing the New York Young Men’s Christian Association, of which he was the second president. Motivated in large part by his desire to live in a more healthful climate, he moved in 1859, from the city to become professor of Greek at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In that year he also received the doctor of divinity degree from Harvard. In 1861 he published Scholia on the New Testament and went on to be ordained in the Presbyterian ministry. He became at this time pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Brunswick, continuing to teach Greek at Rutgers.

Crosby’s reputation for civic as well as scholarly and moral work was already such that in 1861 President Abraham Lincoln offered him the post of minister to Greece. Crosby declined, and later when it was suggested that he might run for elective office, he was similarly negative. In 1863 Crosby returned to New York, becoming the pastor of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1873 he was moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and in 1877 he was a delegate to the first Presbyterian General Council in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Having left teaching, Crosby turned more to writing to express his scholarly interests, which ranged from the popular Social Hints for Young Christians; Bible Companion; and Jesus: His Life and Work to the more learned The True Humanity of Christ; Commentary on the New Testament; and Conformity to the World. A collection of his Yale Lectures on Preaching, which he gave in 1880, was published as The Christian Preacher. In the early 1860s, he helped to found the Greek Club, and this became a New York institution for classicists.

Crosby’s interest in social and moral questions, together with his gregarious personality and the traditional influence that his family had exercised in New York City, caused him to become involved with almost every group interested in reform issues in the city. Over the thirty years of his New York ministry, he was an influential leader of and advocate for many of the reform groups and committees that middle-class humanitarians of the age organized. From 1870 to 1881 Crosby acted as chancellor of the University of New York, having been a member of its council since 1864. In 1878 he helped to found the Society for the Prevention of Crime, one of a number of organizations established in growing urban centers by philanthropists and humanitarians whose aim was to help to provide activities and assistance to the working poor. Crosby served as the first president of the society, whose activities were an extension of the youth and church programs he supported.

Among the other causes in which Crosby interested himself were committees to aid and foster the care of American Indians; he also worked for the enactment of an international copyright law. His greatest efforts, however, were made in the cause of temperance reform. Taking the view that prohibitionists stood in the way of any real progress toward a rational temperance movement, in 1881 he published Moderation vs. Total Abstinence to express his position. He worked together with his son, Ernest Howard Crosby— himself a reformer and from 1887 to 1889 a member of the New York State legislature—to introduce a series of liquor-license bills. The third of these “Crosby bills” passed the legislature but was vetoed by the governor.

Crosby died at sixty-five in New York City, of pneumonia brought on by traveling to the bedside of a dying daughter a week earlier. His wife and four of their five children survived him. An obituary appeared on the front page of the following day’s New York Times under the headline: “He Passed Away Late Yesterday Afternoon, Fully Aware that his Work on Earth was Done—A Long Life of Weil-Doing.”

Howard Crosby’s publications include Lands of the Moslem (1851); Scholia on the New Testament (1861); Social Hints for Young Christians (1866); Bible Companion (1870); Jesus: His Life and Work (1871); Healthy Christian (1872); Thoughts on the Decalogue (1873); Expository Notes on the Book of Joshua (1875); Commentary on Nehemiah (1877); The True Humanity of Christ (1880); The Christian Preacher (1880); Moderation vs. Total Abstinence (1881); Commentary on the New Testament (1885); and Conformity to the World (1891). Biographical sources include M. Crosby, ed.; Memorial Papers and Reminiscences of Howard Crosby (1892); The Dictionary of American Biography (1934); and The New York Times obituary, March 30, 1891.