Capt. Crawford’s rise to Pere Marquette flagship ended in suicide

September 16, 2026

Capt. John G. Crawford. Photo from Sable Points Media Historic Photograph Collection.

This Great Lakes History Log is presented by Filer Credit Union, the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum and Sable Points Media.

Masters of the PM Steamers

By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief

On Monday, July 28, 1919, Capt. John Goodrich Crawford came home from the Pere Marquette Railway carferry fleet in an agitated state.

He had left his vessel early that morning and complained that he was nervous. At some point, he spoke to his sister.

“They put me on No. 18,” he told her.

Crawford had been assigned command of Pere Marquette 18 (II), flagship of the Ludington fleet and one of the most important commands on Lake Michigan. The “II” is used by historians to distinguish the vessel from the first Pere Marquette 18, which sank in 1910. It was not part of the ship’s official name.

Later that day, Crawford went into a bathroom at his Ludington home, apparently intending to shave. His wife, Dena, became concerned and followed him. She found him gravely wounded.

Crawford was taken to Paulina Stearns Hospital in Ludington, where he died that afternoon.

The second ship named the Pere Marquette 18. Rose Hawley Archives, Mason County Historical Society.

A coroner’s jury ruled the death a suicide. A newspaper account published days later reported Crawford had been extremely nervous for months and had complained that life in the carferry service had left him “all shot to pieces.” His wife told investigators his recent behavior had become unusual enough to alarm her.

Crawford’s Michigan death certificate recorded suicide from a razor wound to the neck. He was 48 years old, one month short of his 49th birthday.

His death abruptly ended a maritime career that had begun when he was a boy. During more than three decades on the Great Lakes, Crawford worked his way from fireman to mate, tug captain, carferry officer and finally master of some of the Pere Marquette Railway’s largest vessels.

Crawford was born Aug. 27, 1870, in Manistee, the son of Capt. John Montgomery Crawford and Angelia Mary Goodrich Crawford. Census records placed the family in Wisconsin in 1880, though a later biographical account stated they moved to Ludington in 1881.

Maritime work was already the Crawford family business.

J.B. Mansfield’s 1899 “History of the Great Lakes” stated that Crawford attended public school until age 16 but had already spent school vacations sailing. In spring 1886, he shipped as a fireman aboard the excursion steamer Gordon, operating between Milwaukee and Whitefish Bay.

He next spent two seasons firing the steamer William Crowell and then worked a season aboard the tug Roby.

By 1890, when he was about 20, Crawford had obtained his pilot’s license. He became mate of the steamer Temple Emery and remained in that position for three seasons.

The tugboat Sport. Photo from Sable Points Media Historic Photograph Collection.

In spring 1893, Crawford was appointed master of the tug Volunteer, owned by William Turgeon of Ludington. The following year, he entered the employ of the Cartier Lumber Company and became master of the tug Ida M. Stevens.

He commanded the Stevens for three seasons before being transferred to the steel tug Sport.

The Sport, designed by prominent naval architect Frank E. Kirby and built at Wyandotte in 1873, was the first steel tug built on the Great Lakes.

During the winter of 1898-99, Crawford supervised rebuilding work on the Ida M. Stevens and repairs to the Sport, including installation of a new boiler, according to Mansfield.

Those assignments placed Crawford squarely in Ludington’s late 19th century lumber and towing industry. They also placed him alongside his father.

Capt. John Montgomery Crawford was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1843 and served during the Civil War with the 6th Michigan Cavalry, according to federal pension records. After the war, he returned to the lakes.

Mansfield’s biographical sketch of the younger Crawford stated that his father had spent his early years aboard schooners and later became both an owner and master of tugs.

Great Lakes vessel records have associated the elder Crawford with the Grace Patterson, Margaret and Volunteer, among other vessels connected with the Manistee and Ludington maritime trades.

A March 1896 Ludington newspaper report showed father and son working in the same towing operation. The tugs Sport and Ida M. Stevens had been prepared for the season under John M. Crawford’s supervision. The elder Crawford and Warren A. Cartier also had taken a contract for sorting and towing logs.

The newspaper reported that the Ida M. Stevens, under Capt. John G. Crawford, would perform the towing.

John Montgomery Crawford died in March 1897 at age 54.

The previous year, John Goodrich Crawford had married Dena Beckman. Michigan marriage records list their wedding as May 4, 1896, in Ludington. Dena was born in Danzig, Prussia, and came to the United States as a child.

The couple later adopted Donald Montgomery Crawford, who was born in Plymouth in 1904. Newspaper reports following Crawford’s death specifically identified Donald as his adopted son.

By the opening years of the 20th century, Crawford’s career shifted away from lumber tugs and into the railroad carferry fleet that was becoming Ludington’s defining maritime industry.

Surviving crew lists document his advancement.

Pere Marquette 19. Photo from Mason County Historical Society Rose Hawley Archives.

When Pere Marquette 19 arrived in Ludington on her maiden voyage in November 1903, Capt. John Doyle was master and John Nolan was first mate. John Crawford was second mate.

A February 1906 crew roster placed Crawford aboard Pere Marquette 20 as second mate under Capt. George L. Thompson.

In January 1908, Crawford remained second officer aboard No. 20, then under Capt. John C. Ackerman. By 1909, he had advanced to first officer of Pere Marquette 19 under Capt. William H. LaFleur.

By 1911, records preserved by Bowling Green State University’s Historical Collections of the Great Lakes identified Crawford as a Pere Marquette captain.

The collection’s Great Lakes Red Book records placed Crawford aboard Pere Marquette 19 in 1914 and 1915, Pere Marquette 17 in 1917 and 1918, and Pere Marquette 18 in 1919. Other directory entries identified him as a captain without always naming his vessel.

The yearly directories cannot necessarily be read as a day-by-day record of vessel assignments. An Oct. 1, 1917, newspaper account concerning a fleet reorganization following repairs to Pere Marquette 18 identified Crawford as captain of Pere Marquette 19 while LaFleur was assigned to No. 17.

Pere Marquette 17. Photo from Mason County Historical Society Rose Hawley Archives.

The differences likely reflected seasonal assignments, publication dates or the movement of senior officers among vessels.

What is clear is that by the final years of his life Crawford had joined the senior group of Pere Marquette masters.

That status became especially important during World War I.

The federal government took control of the nation’s railroads in December 1917 under the United States Railroad Administration. The Pere Marquette Railway and its Lake Michigan carferries were included.

Beginning in 1918, railroad ferry fleets could be operated more as an integrated system, allowing vessels to be shifted according to wartime freight demands rather than traditional company patterns.

The 1919 Great Lakes Red Book listed Capt. John Stufflebeam aboard Pere Marquette 17, Crawford aboard Pere Marquette 18, Charles Robertson aboard Pere Marquette 19 and Esten Bahle aboard Pere Marquette 20.

For Crawford, command of the second ship to be named Pere Marquette 18 placed him at the top of the Ludington fleet.

The vessel carried a difficult history.

The original Pere Marquette 18, built in 1902, sank in Lake Michigan on Sept. 9, 1910, with heavy loss of life. Its replacement was launched later that year and entered service in 1911, taking the same number and becoming the fleet’s flagship.

An article in the July 29, 1919 edition of the Detroit Free Press stated that captains Joseph Russell (1853-1913) and John C. Ackerman (1862-1916) had died while they were in command of the second PM 18 while Captain William H. LeFleur (1870-1926) was released from service.

Russell died on July 23, 1913 at Milwaukee’s Hanover Hospital. He was in command of the PM 17 when it rescued a majority of the crew and passengers of the sinking PM 18 and had been assigned to the 18’s newly built replacement as its first master in January 1911. Russell was also the original master of the fleet’s first carferry, the Pere Marquette, in 1897. Russell did not die onboard the 18, however, but did pass away while he was assigned to the ship.

Ackerman, however, did die while onboard the vessel. The carferry was entering Ludington harbor and closing on the railroad slip on the afternoon of Dec. 28, 1916. Ackerman was in the pilothouse as the vessel swung toward the dock. He rang the engine room to stop the engines. Almost immediately, the 54-year-old captain clutched his chest and collapsed. By the time members of the crew reached him, he was dead.

LaFleur was the third man to command the second PM 18 and apparently ended his service with the Pere Marquette Railway in 1918.

Whether that history was on Crawford’s mind when he told his sister, “They put me on No. 18,” cannot be established from the surviving records.

He may have been referring simply to the pressure of the assignment. He may have been aware of the deaths of previous captains. Or he may have been trying to explain the strain he was experiencing.

The records do establish that the strain was serious.

Pere Marquette Magazine’s obituary stated Crawford had felt indisposed while on duty, went home and complained of being nervous. He was taken to Paulina Stearns Hospital and died at about 3 p.m. July 28.

His death certificate created one final historical question.

It listed Oak Grove Cemetery in Manistee as his intended burial place.

Crawford was not buried there.

His grave is at Lakeview Cemetery in Ludington, Block 8, Plot 17, Grave 3. His headstone reads simply:

Grave of Capt. John G. Crawford at Lakeview Cemetery in Ludington. Photo by Rob Alway.

CAPTAIN
JOHN G. CRAWFORD
1870-1919

Why the death certificate listed Oak Grove Cemetery is unknown. It may have reflected an original burial plan that changed before the funeral, or it may have simply been an error.

Crawford’s parents were also buried at Lakeview Cemetery, though their son was buried in a different part of the cemetery.

Dena Crawford remained in Ludington. In 1921 she married Robert McClintock. She died in 1958. Donald Crawford died in 1965.

John Goodrich Crawford’s career lasted about 33 years and spanned a major transformation in Ludington maritime history.

He began as a teenage fireman aboard excursion steamers and later commanded lumber tugs in an industry built around timber, schooners and towing.

He died as master of a massive steel railroad carferry operating as part of a federally controlled transportation system.

Researching Crawford is complicated by another prominent Great Lakes captain with nearly the same name.

John Goodrich Crawford’s father was Capt. John Montgomery Crawford, born in 1843 and dead by 1897.

But another, unrelated Capt. John Montgomery Crawford was born in Manistee County in 1876 and went on to become a prominent Great Lakes passenger-steamer captain. He commanded vessels including the Puritan and later served aboard ships in the Goodrich and other passenger fleets.

Historical records have sometimes confused the two younger captains.

Bowling Green State University records contain later entries under “John G. Crawford” for vessels operating in 1924, 1927 and 1928 — years after John Goodrich Crawford died. Those entries correspond more closely with the career of the unrelated John Montgomery Crawford.

The overlap makes it necessary to compare dates, vessels, employers, residences and family records rather than relying on names alone.

For the Pere Marquette fleet, however, the distinction is clear.

John Goodrich Crawford was the Capt. John Crawford who rose through the Ludington carferry fleet and, in 1919, received command of its flagship.

It was the final command of his life.

Masters of the PM Steamers series to date:

In search of information

Editor’s Note: I am seeking historical artifacts and stories from people whose family members worked as ship captains or in Ludington’s maritime industry. While this project focuses on the Ludington carferry fleet, I am also interested in items related to anyone from Mason County who worked on the Great Lakes or oceans.

This series has three goals:

To share Ludington’s rich maritime history with readers of the Mason County Press.
To publish a biographical book about the Ludington fleet captains.
To create an interactive kiosk exhibit at the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum for historical research.

I am looking for artifacts such as photographs, written documents, or digitized materials. Items will be placed in the Mason County Historical Society archives, and donors will receive documentation of their contribution.

If you have items or stories to share, please email editor@mediagroup31.com or call/text 231-757-3202.

Note: I am also interested in collections related to the Mason County railroad industry.

If you would like to financially contribute to the book project, please click here for more information.

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