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“C” is for Crafts, William (1787-1826)

“C” is for Crafts, William (1787-1826). Legislator, writer, reformer. A native of Charleston Crafts was a graduate of Harvard. Crafts played a significant role in several reform movements of the early nineteenth century. He helped to expand the rights of Catholic and Jews. He supported the campaign to establish the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston. Crafts had a keen interest in the cause for the hearing and speech impaired and this cause brought him into alliance with key supporters of a state lunatic asylum. In 1821 Crafts was elected to the South Carolina Senate where he would serve for the remainder of his life. Although William Crafts would not see the asylum for which he labored so long coming to fruition, in 1960 South Carolina renamed one of its facilities for the mentally impaired the Crafts-Farrow Hospital.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.