Colonel William Crawford — Pioneer, Soldier, and the Sandusky Expedition

A marker near Connellsville honors William Crawford, who built his log cabin along the Youghiogheny River in seventeen sixty-five at the place called Stewart's Crossings. Crawford was a frontier soldier and close friend of George Washington, serving under General Forbes in the seventeen fifty-eight campaign against Fort Duquesne and serving in Washington's army during the New Jersey campaign of that period.

His final campaign ended in catastrophe. In seventeen eighty-two, Crawford commanded an expedition against Sandusky, Ohio, aiming to stop Wyandot and Delaware raids on Pennsylvania settlements. The expedition was routed. Crawford was captured, tried for American atrocities against the Moravian Delaware at Gnadenhutten just months earlier, found guilty, and burned at the stake on June eleventh, seventeen eighty-two, near present-day Crawfordsville, Ohio. The county Crawford County, Pennsylvania, bears his name.