Thomas Harndin Crafts, 1855-1918
Headstone GPS Coordinates:
Birth: 06 November 1855, Alexander, Washington County, Maine
Death: December 1918, likely in Crosby, Kitsap County, Washington
Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Mary H. Crafts née Johnson
American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Captain Samuel Crafts (Massachusetts),
Samuel Pratt (Massachusetts), Reuben John Packard (Massachusetts.)
Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards.
Thomas Harndin Crafts was born on November 6, 1855, in Alexander, Washington County, Maine, to Hiram A. Crafts and Esther L. Spearin. He was the eldest of their eight children. Both sides of Thomas’s family descended from early New England settlers, tracing lineage back to Mayflower passengers Francis Cooke and Isaac Allerton.
Hiram Crafts, Thomas’s father, may have been born in either Alexander, Maine, or in St. John, Canada located in what was then considered New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. This ambiguity is reflected in various census records, which alternately list Maine, Canada, and Nova Scotia as places of origin. It is worth noting that the U.S.–Canada border in Maine was not formally established until 1842, and many families at that time lived and moved freely across both sides.
Thomas spent his early years on the family farm in Alexander, working both on the land and as a general laborer. At the age of twenty-nine, he moved to Kitsap County, Washington, where he found employment at the mill in Seabeck. Later, he acquired one hundred and twenty acres of land in the Crosby area, continuing his work as a farmer and laborer.
On May 24, 1914, at the age of fifty-eight, Thomas ended his bachelorhood by marrying Mary H. (Johnson) Borden, a Swedish widow.
Mary H. Johnson was born in Sweden between 1859 and 1861 to Johan Johnson and Mary Enstrom (maiden name isn’t certain). She immigrated to the United States in 1882 at the age of twenty-one. A decade later, on October 15, 1892, she married Charles Borden in Worcester, Massachusetts.
At the time of their marriage, Charles had recently lost his first wife, Sarah, leaving him with five sons. According to the 1900 census, the three youngest boys were living with their maternal grandparents, while Charles and Mary boarded in Worcester, where Charles worked as a meat clerk.
Around 1909, Charles and Mary moved to the Crosby area, where Charles purchased eighty acres of land adjacent to Thomas Crafts’ property in Crosby. The 1910 census records Charles working as a retail store salesman, while Mary was employed as a private family cook.
In 1912, Charles passed away from pulmonary tuberculosis. His remains were cremated in Seattle, though the final resting place of his ashes is uncertain. There’s a good possibility that they may have been interred in Seabeck Cemetery.
Two years later, on May 24, 1914, Mary married Thomas Crafts in King County, Washington. Tragically, their marriage was short-lived. Less than a year later, Mary was admitted to Providence Hospital in Seattle for a hysterectomy due to uterine cancer. She died from shock following the surgery on May 18, 1915, at approximately fifty-two years old. In her will, she left her entire estate to Thomas, including 120 shares in the Kitsap County Oil Development Company of Bremerton.
Thomas’s precise date of death is not known, but it is believed he died in December 1918 at the age of sixty-three, likely in Crosby, from unknown causes. In his will, he bequeathed his property and estate to his brother William Crafts in Alexander, Maine. He also left money and shares in the Kitsap Oil Development Company and the Cooke Mining and Reduction Company—originally owned by Charles E. Borden and later by Mary—to his other siblings in Maine.
Thomas was laid to rest beside his wife Mary in Seabeck Cemetery. Neither of them had any children.