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Harry, the youngest of Captain James Crewdson's ten children, was born July 1, 1883 in Ulverston, England
and raised as a Quaker. As a teenager he ran away to Liverpool to work on a ship but his father brought
him back home. Although Harry sailed with his father from time to time, and went around the world
in 1907, he did not, finally, follow his older brothers to a career on the sea.
In 1904 he married Mary Ann Green and at the age of 25, in 1908 he took a job as a mechanic for Courtolds Ltd, in Coventry. Over his years there got to know Henry Johnson, the President of Courtolds. In 1910 Johnson sent Harry, his cousin Robert Crewdson, Ernie Copson and others to Marcus Hook, PA as part of the "Rayon Gang" to help start what ultimately became the American Viscose Company and which today (2001) is a part of the FMC Corporation.
Harry must have liked it here because a year later he started an exodus of our
family from Ulverston to the States. In 1911 his wife Mary Ann joined him with their sons Jim, Roy
and Henry, Jr. Later that year and the next her sister Jane (Jennie) Green came over with her husband
William Riley, Katherine Green with her husband Harry Moran. Joe Green, who turned his back on his wife and
let his children, Ron and Fred, be raised by the Morans, came alone.
Later, in 1912, Jack Green came with his wife Annie and their children Maude, William and Frank. This was an event important to later generations of Crewdson teenagers because Maude was the mother of Bill Haley, the leader of the Comets and the founder of rock and roll. To close out this eventfilled period, John (Jack) Crewdson was born in 1912.
In 1914 Harry transferred to Roanoke, VA as the assistant chief engineer to help build a Rayon plant there. While there my father Elmer took advantage of this fact and was born a Virginian in 1917. Later, during the war, Harry moved to Chester, PA and went to work at Sun Ship as night chief engineer and later joined the Army but the war ended before he shipped out. After this he returned to Roanoke and later transferred to Lewistown, PA as chief engineer of a new rayon plant being built there. In 1925 Harry moved back to Chester, where the boys went to Chester HS and in 1926 he was made the chief engineer of all of American Viscose Company and moved to their head office in Wilmington.
On Christmas Eve, 1927, Mary Ann died suddenly while at the dinner table with her family and her sisters helped to take care of the boys over the next year. In 1928 Henry, Jr went to Cornell, Roy entered Pennsylvania Military College, and Jack and Elmer were enrolled at Swarthmore Preparatory School.
In 1929 Harry moved to Philadelphia when Viscose relocated their headquarters, to Upper Darby in 1931 and to Drexel
Hill in 1932 where he married Agnes Connors. Roy graduated that year from PMC as Batallion commander and
went on to a career in the Army that culminated in Japan where he was a member of General MacArthur's
staff. In 1935 Harry moved the family to a beautiful estate in West Chester, PA where he lived until
he retired from American Viscose.
In 1948, at the age of 66, Harry retired from American Viscose and proceeded to settle down and go to
work. In 1950 he went to Lewistown, PA to build a power plant and a few years later to Chile to build
a rayon plant for the Oscar Von Kohorn Company. During this period he moved to Florida and then on
to Barranquila, Columbia to build a plant for Columbia Rayon. In November 1953, having divorced Agnes,
Harry married Kitty, a native of Chile.
It was in this era that I knew my grandfather, slightly, during his occasional visits to Philadelphia. When we were very little, and he was driving us somewhere, he would always sing "School Days", and get us to sing along and we would try to imagine being taught arithmetic with the aid of a hickory stick. The one thing you noticed about him was his intense interest in everything you were doing or had to say. He had the ability to make you feel as if you were special in his life. I suspect this was one secret of his success. To Donnie, an older cousin of mine, he tried to give business lessons. He said that you had to study the men who worked for you, figure out what they were good at and what they weren't. Make use of the positive characteristics and don't push them in areas where they are not so good. If a man didn't function well early in the morning, don't bother him in the morning, and so on.
Naturally, I was interested in this dynamo who would appear from nowhere, be part of my life for a day or two, and then disappear again for years at a time. From the smiles and body language of my mother when she talked of his charm and his dancing ability I got the idea that maybe he was a ladies man. Sure enough, this has been amply confirmed recently by his niece Phyllis Moran Porter, still going strong at 96. According to her "everyone in town knew he had girlfriends all over the place"
In 1957 Harry went to Japan to build a plant for Omikenshi and later in 1959 he went back to Chile to build
a cellophane plant. In 1960 he was back in Japan again to build a cellophane plant for Nissan Spinning Company in
Tokushima. After a short stay in Pompano Beach, Florida, he went to Nicaragua to build another
power plant. With that behind him he was off again to Osaka, Japan for three months to sell the Coljam Spinning
Machine. As a change in pace he then signed on as an engineer in 1964 in Sao Paulo for a one year
contract and while there spent some time in Buenos Aires making proprietary changes to a spinning machine there.
In 1965 the general impression was that he was starting to get old at 82 and despite being willing to go out again began having trouble lining up contracts. Giving up to the inevitable he settled down in Pompano Beach to live with Kitty and his daughter Ruth Ann.
Move two Ulverstonians to the USA, wait 88 years, and this is what happens |
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| Approx 130 descendants of Harry, one of Alice and one of Annie. Crewdson family reunion in Cross Lanes West Virginia in August 1998. |