Scottish Clan Book - Crawford

Taking their name from the lands in Lanarkshire where they settled, the Crawfords spread westwards into Ayrshire and gained well-deserved renown as loyal defenders of Scotland’s freedom, often at a terrible cost to themselves.

A Crawford lass was the mother of the great patriot and warrior William Wallace, while in later centuries Crawfords became stalwart supporters of the Presbyterian religion.

One staunch defender of his faith was Hugh Crawford, the younger son of the laird of Auchinames, who was appointed the first minister at New Cumnock, in his native Ayrshire, in 1653, during the bloody struggle between the opposing forces of the Crown and the Presbyterian Covenanters.

Known as ‘one of Ayrshire’s band of true covenanting ministers’, he literally took to the hills to preach at open-air conventicles after being expelled from his parish.

Read here the high drama of the lives and times of the Crawfords.