Isabel Crawford

Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford (May 26, 1865 – November 18, 1961) was a Baptist missionary who worked with the Kiowa people in the Oklahoma Territory. Crawford, who had lost most of her hearing due to an illness, communicated with the Kiowa using Plains Indian sign language. She lived among the Kiowa for about eleven years, sharing their lives and helping them build their first church and, when she died, she was buried in their cemetery.

Early life Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford was born in Cheltenham, Ontario, Canada, the fourth child of John and Sarah Louise Hackett Crawford. John Crawford was raised a Presbyterian in County Londonderry, Ireland, but converted to the Baptist church as a teenager. When he was a new pastor in London, he met Sarah Hackett, who was originally from Dublin, Ireland. In about 1858, they immigrated, with their two oldest children, to Canada. The Crawford family settled in Cheltenham, north of Toronto, where Isabel and her brother were born.

In 1868, her family moved to Woodstock, Ontario, where her father became a professor of theology at the Canadian Literary Institute. In 1880, when the Institute moved to Toronto, John resigned and opened a school in Rapid City, Manitoba, Canada. The school was not a success and, in 1883, John was offered the pastorate at St. Thomas in the Dakota Territory.

The Crawford's remained in the Dakota Territory until 1890 when John and Sarah returned to Ontario and, shortly afterwards, moved in with Isabel's sister and her husband, due to John's failing health.

After her parents moved back to Canada, Isabel attended a two-year course at the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago, graduating in 1893.

The new church had no pastor, but they wanted to celebrate the Eucharist, so Crawford told them to elect one of their own to perform the service, and they chose Lucius Aitsan. The denominational mission board and the nearest baptist missionary pastor disapproved of this move. However, they continued to hold their own services when the visiting pastor was not available. In 1904, the congregation was censured by the Oklahoma Indian Baptist Association for having "deviated from the orderly practice of Baptist churches in the administration of the Lord's Supper", and Crawford resigned her position. Local congregations in Cache began to use the church on Sunday mornings.

Later career The WBHMS had supported Crawford through the doctrinal dispute, and she continued to work for them, traveling around the country and speaking at churches and other gatherings. She became well known for ending her presentations with her Plains Indian sign language-version of the Lord's Prayer. Crawford back-translated the prayer into English, and it was published as a pamphlet:

Death and burial Crawford retired in 1929 and moved in with two nieces in Grimsby, Ontario. Before she left Saddle Mountain, Crawford declared that she "would sooner lie hidden among the tall weeds of the unkept Indian cemetery . . . than in any other burial ground in the whole world." When she died on November 18, 1961, the Kiowa buried her in the Saddle Mountain Indian Baptist Church Cemetery near the graves of her first converts. The inscription on her tombstone read, "I Dwell Among Mine Own People."