The Crane Family

The Crane Family
Morris County, New Jersey

A Bit of Ancient Ancestral History.

[The Crane Crest]

The above Crane crest represents one of the many coats of arms of English Cranes, and one of the Cheshire branch, the most numerous in America. The only armonial bearing of the Cranes with a motto is from the Cheshire branch. Qui pascet corvus non obliviscitus grus. (He that feeds the crows will not forget the Crane.)

Gen. Josiah Crane, whose son Jasper emigrated with his family from London to America at an early date, and was one of the founders of Newark, N.J., in 1666, was related to William Crane, who married, Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Sir Andrew Butler, Knight, 1382.

There were several branches of the Crane family, the Cheshire and Chilton branches, became most noted and numerous, who settled in the several counties of England, and who were originally Franks, freemen, and related to, and holding high positions under the long line of Pharamond Kings, of whom but little is known, these become more modernized under the Merovingian and Carlovingian Kings, of whom Charlemange, (Charles, the Great) founded the greatest Christian empire the sun ever shone on, in fact, christianized the whole world.

The language of this Celtic race at the time of Charlemange was mostly high German, which is believed to have been modernized from the ancient Cimmerian language. They peopled ancient Gallia, now modern France and a part of Germany. They waged war succesfully against the Romans, and at one time laid waste the city of ancient Rome. Though fierce in warfare, and revengeful in wrong, they were noted and prospered as a nation of peace.

Herodotus, the father of history, says that the Cimmerians, who inhabited the now garden of Russia, between the rivers Don and Dnieper and including the peninsula of Crimea, were driven from their abodes by the ancient Scynthians, the Tartaric races of the children of Magog, son of Japhet, and who inhabited the region North and East of Cimmeria, about B.C. 616, to Asia Minor. The Cimmerians were an agricultural people, dwelling in tents, used wagons, and were milkers of mares. They were expert horsemen and in warfare used spears, and drew the long bow which characteristic may have been handed down as kinsmanship of the Crane family of to-day. To those who went to the then outside world as traders of fine horses and agricultural products.

The Cimmerians were governed by a long line of Kings, of whom but little is known. Driven from their homes, for nearly a century they waged war upon the walled cities of Asia Minor, but their methods of warfare were not successful and they took up their line of march westword and peopled ancient Gallia where they become a more powerful and enlightened nation than before.

The Cimmerians were the direct descendants of the children of Gomer, the first of the seven sons of Japhet, and were, perhaps, among the most enlighteded and civilized of the barbarous tribes. The Scynthians, the descendants of Magog, may have been still more barbarous, but these tribal nations become a power, and were alluded to as barbarous by the later historians, but the most civilized nations of to day, in warfare, may be termed by future historians as extremely barbarous and cruel.

Homer, the father of epic poetry, who flourished about two hundred years after King Solomon, relates to the Cimmerians in Odessey, in the descent to Hell, in a figurative, or rather imaginative language, perhaps, revengeful, from some supposed wrong done to his kinsman, but may not be applied directly to the ancient Cimmerians only in name.

He describes the Cimmerians as a dusky nation, in a lonely land, and gloomy cells, where the sun ne'er shines, and endless night envades, and wrapped in shades, and where woman, to ill thy mind is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend. If he has pictured darkly the land of Hades, he has given us some pictures of angelic and earthly beings none the less dark. We pity and forgive him, for he flourished in ages long ago, and, perhaps, did not allude to, or insinuate present generations.

The name Crane, though mentioned in Biblical history by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel as given to a bird, was not known or applied to persons or families until the middle or later part of the 10th century, when whole communities, presumably, closely related, followed the prevailing fashion and applied to themselves the various names as we now know them. The whole catalogues of birds, beasts and fishes and of things animate and inanimate, and almost every known name was confiscated for the use of double names. For a time, it must have been a Babalonic confusion of tongues, as many persons in different localities must have substituted the same names according as fancy dictated. For genealogist to trace blood relations, unless in a line of Kings, or by tribal nationalities, is rather questionable authority.

Much attention was given in Biblical history in tracing genealogy as the son of, —and if we will accept the genealogy of Gomer, the father of the Cimmerian race, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah, we can find in the fifth chapter of Genesis, the whole line of patriarchs to Adam, the man who could not resist temptation.

By Adam's fall,
We sinned all.

The Cranes as a family, related to those high in authority, were noted as castle builders in ancient France and Germany, and later in England. The American descendants are content with building their castles in air, as no occasion or custom, for the protection of life and property has shown itself, or is it desirable to live within great walls of stone as in ancient and heraldic times.

The love of country, frugality, honesty and piety has been inherited traits of character, and inebriety, criminality, pauperism and suicides are almost wholly unknown.

[There is an indication that this "history" continues, but those pages are currently unavailable to us.]