In 1833, Mr. Crawford moved with his family to Detroit, whence, after remaining six years, he removed to Presque Isle on Lake Huron, where he was the first to start the wood trade, for fuel for our then rapidly growing steamboat commerce. Here he remained seven years, superintending large bodies of wood cutters and suppliers, the saw mills, now so common in the lumber region, being then unknown. In 1846, perceiving, with his usual forecast, that coal was likely to supplant wood for the uses of our steam marine, he removed to Cleveland, and at once invested about forty thousand dollars in the Chippewa mines, so called, in the Mahoning Valley, which had been opened a year or two before, and promised, as the event proved, to afford an almost inexhaustible supply of the richest coal. These mines, adding tracts of adjoining coal land to them as occasion demanded, he continued to work with a large annual yield for more then twenty years. Shortly after commencing with the Chippewa, he was found, in 1848, to be among the pioneers in opening up the beds of Briar Hill coal in the Mahoning Valley, so well known to steamboat men and manufacturers ever since, as being a kind of coal peculiarly fitted for their uses. Here he continued to mine largely at several different localities selected by him with rare judgment. He also opened and carried on mining extensively at other points, such as on the Ohio, below Steubenville, also in Orange county, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. His chief business office and coal depots were at Cleveland, but he had branch establishments at Detroit and Chicago, and at one time was largely interested in vessel property on the Lakes, and although the business of mining and selling coal, mainly for supplying steam craft and for exportation, was his leading pursuit, he was one of the earliest in 1851, to engage in the manufacture of pig iron from our native ores in the Mahoning Valley, having an interest in the second furnace started there, and being the builder of the fourth. From time to time he invested judiciously in real estate.