Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford was a Baptist missionary who worked with the Kiowa people in the Oklahoma Territory.
17 Facts About Isabel Crawford
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Isabel Crawford 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.
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Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford was born in Cheltenham, Ontario, Canada, the fourth child of John and Sarah Louise Hackett Crawford.
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John Isabel Crawford was raised a Presbyterian in County Londonderry, Ireland, but converted to the Baptist church as a teenager.
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Isabel Crawford hoped to get a foreign posting but, instead, the Women's Baptist Home Mission Society appointed her to the Elk Creek Mission on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation in the Oklahoma Territory.
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Isabel Crawford used sign language to teach the Kiowa about "the Jesus road".
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Isabel Crawford had been at the Elk Creek Mission for three years when she was invited to move to Saddle Mountain, on the northern edge of the Wichita Mountains near Mountain View, Oklahoma, about thirty miles away.
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Isabel Crawford agreed without consulting the board of the WBHMS and, in 1896, she moved to Saddle Mountain.
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Isabel Crawford was the first person to be baptized at Saddle Mountain.
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Isabel Crawford taught the women to sew and used that time to teach them about the Bible.
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Isabel Crawford secured a 160-acre allotment from the federal government for a mission and 40 additional acres for a cemetery.
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Isabel Crawford taught the women to sew quilts, which they sold to raise money to build a church.
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The new church had no pastor, but they wanted to celebrate the Eucharist, so Isabel Crawford told them to elect one of their own to perform the service, and they chose Lucius Aitsan.
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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 Isabel Crawford resigned her position.
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Isabel Crawford became well known for ending her presentations with her Plains Indian sign language-version of the Lord's Prayer.
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Isabel Crawford back-translated the prayer into English, and it was published as a pamphlet:.
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Isabel Crawford retired in 1929 and moved in with two nieces in Grimsby, Ontario.