Erastus Milo Cravath

Erastus Milo Cravath (July 1, 1833 – September 4, 1900) was a pastor and American Missionary Association (AMA) official who after the American Civil War, helped found Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and numerous other historically black colleges in Georgia and Tennessee for the education of freedmen. He also served as president of Fisk University for more than 20 years.

Early life, education and family Erastus Milo Cravath was born July 1, 1833, in Homer, New York, to Elizabeth "Betsey" Northway Cravath and Oren Birney Cravath His father was one of a trio to form an abolition party in Homer, where the family had settled in 1830, at Route 281 and Cold Brook Road, the Cravath dwelling is now noted as the Salisbury-Pratt Homestead, a way station along the Underground Railroad to Canada. Erastus was raised in a household fervently devoted to the abolitionist cause and aiding refugee slaves. It was a time and place of progressive causes. The daughter of his brother, Bishop, Dr. May Hannah Cravath Wharton (1873–1959), left a noted autobiography, Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands, an account of her years as a physician in rural Tennessee.

A decade prior to the Civil War the Cravath family relocated to Oberlin, Ohio. Cravath was a student at the local common school, then Homer Academy, in New York. He subsequently studied at Oberlin College, graduating with a bachelor's, in 1857, then with a Master of Divinity degree in 1860. After devoting much of his adult life to religion and education, in 1886, Cravath received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Grinnell College. and Paul Drennan Cravath, who became a noted lawyer and a co-founder of the Council on Foreign Relations, which he served as inaugural vice-president, then as a director.

Career Cravath became a pastor in the Congregational Church of Berlin Heights, Ohio, in what later became part of the United Church of Christ. He was an abolitionist. He entered the Union Army in December 1863, serving until the end of the war, including campaigns in Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee. Using Fisk as his base, Cravath also started freedmen's schools at Macon, Milledgeville and Atlanta, Georgia; and at various points in Tennessee. Originally buried in St. Charles, his remains were later moved to Nashville National Cemetery.

His niece Georgia Laura White taught English at Fisk from 1934 to 1936, and served on the school's board of trustees.