Excerpt from Chapter 4

Like the Murray side, the Crawford branch of Murray Loop can be traced back to an event occurring in 1808. That was the year thirty-six-year-old Hugh Crawford married twenty-year-old Mary Wilder on November 24 in Brunswick, Maine. The Crawford/Wilder marriage sparked the matriarchal line that would one day merge with the Murrays.

Between 1809 and 1827 Hugh and Mary Crawford had nine children. Nancy, one of their daughters, plays a pivotal role in shaping the legacy of Murray Loop. Nancy Phedora Crawford, born in 1824 in Arkright, New York, was the eighth of nine children. Mary died when Nancy was five; her father died six years later. She remained close to her siblings, taking care of her younger brother Wilder.

When Nancy turned sixteen, she began working as a live-in tutor. Only five feet tall, she often had students, young boys especially, who towered over her. One morning, according to family lore, one of these boys pressed his advantage and disrespected her. Nancy picked up a large book and whacked him so hard he fell to the floor in surprise. She put her foot on his chest and held him there until he promised to obey her and cease causing problems. The feisty young teacher made her point, and the two of them got along fine afterwards. Nancy carried that strong spirit into all aspects of her life.

Coinciding with her teaching, Nancy felt a second call pushing her to action. An earnest young woman with strong convictions, she was determined to share her religion. She went door-to-door encouraging everyone she met to embrace Christianity if they hadn’t already done so.

In 1848, twenty-four-year-old Nancy met and married twenty-six-year-old Free Will Baptist circuit preacher Lester B. Starr.1 Nancy hoped to assist her new husband in bringing converts to Christianity. The couple settled in Plainfield, New York, and the following year Nancy gave birth to a daughter they named Sarah. As the Starrs made a home for themselves, Nancy’s older sister Vina came for a prolonged visit. Vina assisted during the birth of Nancy’s second child, Ina, on December 29, 1849.2

When Nancy gave birth to Ina, her joy was tempered by sadness. Little Sarah died shortly after Ina’s arrival. Four years later, in 1854, Lester Starr Jr. was born, followed by a son, Marion, who, like Sarah, also died in infancy.

Over time, Nancy’s relationship with her husband disintegrated. Their home wasn’t a happy one. Her dream of working in a religious partnership with Lester faded. She remained at home alone with the children while he left for days at a time to preach.

Nancy’s granddaughter Alice Murray Green attributes her grandmother’s discontent to Lester’s neglect. Lester dined on healthy meals provided by members of his various congregations in contrast to his wife and children who went hungry at home. Granddaughter Lucy Murray Marrs believes the rift was crueler, describing an argument over one of Nancy’s pregnancies when Lester tried to force her into miscarrying.3

Whether due to his neglect or physical abuse, Nancy believed she couldn’t stay with her husband. She started looking for a way to break free of her marriage. At this point in the story, family records become ambiguous and, to some extent, intentionally misleading. Nancy left Lester, that much is certain. Although the year can’t be pinpointed, she seems to have fled sometime just before or during the first years of the Civil War.

When the 1860 census was taken, Nancy was found living with her older unmarried sister Mary Ann Crawford, who worked as a ferry operator in Chautauqua, New York, about 250 miles west of Plainfield. Neither her daughter Ina nor son Lester is recorded on the census with Nancy. Although family stories don’t explain when Nancy left Lester, they do explain how. The story goes that Nancy wrote to a relative in Ohio asking for his help:

Elder Starr was so cruel to her and the children that one time she wrote a letter to a relative in Ohio and had a trusted neighbor woman mail it. She asked him if he could come help her and the children escape while Elder Starr was on a trip of some duration. It was all arranged with the help of this neighbor. One night [her relative] came with horse and buggy, and [Nancy] had the children ready and just extra clothes was about all, and they took off silently so no one would know when or where [they] went and couldn’t tell Elder Starr a thing when he returned. They drove as long and fast and far as they could, finally reaching [her relative’s] home in Ohio.4

Nancy’s plan worked. She and the children left without discovery. Their Ohio destination brings up some interesting possibilities later in the story. So does her relationship with one of her helpful neighbors.

Determined to start fresh, Nancy changed her name to Jennie. Jennie P. Starr covered her escape so well that her trail is still cold 150 years later. Little is known about how she filled her days or where she lived. Her granddaughters believed she might have supported herself and her children by teaching school or working as a seamstress in Ohio or New York. Wherever she was, she was well hidden.

Leaving her husband didn’t guarantee freedom for Nancy/Jennie. She would have known that although Elder Starr was out of her life, he still dominated her future. The stringent state laws governing divorce in nineteenth-century New York gave women few options when they wanted to leave their husbands. Women could rarely sue for divorce; even a legal separation was difficult to obtain. Jennie could leave her husband, but she couldn’t break the legal bond between them. Only Lester could do that.

As a rule, divorces were granted only on charges of adultery, a charge Lester later used to obtain their divorce. If a woman were so charged she was not allowed to remarry, at least not within the state of New York.5 The inequity of the divorce laws did not stop Jennie from seeking her independence. The law might, however, have affected her view of marriage. At some point she was introduced to the free love movement.

During the 1850s, this movement had taken up the cause of women, marriage, and reform in the United States. Earnest radicals came together in a variety of communities that shared their ideas of free love, a concept that differs from a similar movement in the United States one hundred years in the future.

The phrase free love in the twenty-first century is often associated with sexual experimentation and the counterculture of the 1960s, but the free love movement of the 1860s did not advocate short-term sexual relationships or multiple sex partners. The nineteenth-century term referred to relationships that were freely entered into and not regulated by law or religion; free love participants usually entered long-term monogamous relationships without the legal bonds of marriage.

Proponents of the free love movement included middle-class reformers who resisted laws that prevented unmarried couples from living together and government legislation that regulated adultery and divorce. Adherents also sought freedom from church interference in personal relationships. Free love advocates believed that love growing from the natural laws of attraction would blossom to bind two people together in peace and harmony, strengthen the bond of family and home, and produce healthy, happy, loving children.6

Free love leaders gave speeches, authored publications, and sought to educate their audiences about the ideals they themselves acknowledged as "radical." Their ideas found support with independent-minded people who varied in philosophy from Christian fundamentalism to Darwinism. Many of the followers lived in communities across New York and Ohio where they could share their beliefs without conflict. One location seemed especially welcoming.

Of the nearly 500 communal experiments undertaken in the United States during the nineteenth century, the Berlin Heights area of Ohio stands out as a unique example of community acceptance.7 Between 1857 and 1877 there were seven attempts to establish a utopian community at Berlin Heights.8 As founders sought to keep these unusual communities alive, they often wrote articles expressing the group’s goals and intentions. Eight different journals and/or newspapers were published in Berlin Heights over a twenty-year period. They all reflected the social reformist attitudes and strong sense of individuality that play important roles in Murray Loop history.

The first free love group to organize in Berlin Heights consisted of twenty members. They came together in 1856.9 Some of them lived communally while others lived individually. All respected the ideals of personal freedom, honest commerce, women’s rights, and free love.10 Many in the group supported abolition and practiced temperance and vegetarianism.11

Some established families in Berlin Heights weren’t ready to see the world from this new perspective, so the free love colony faced suspicion and resistance. Undaunted by their neighbors’ doubts, the earnest believers overcame this early prejudice by working hard and remaining true to their ideals. Years later, after the free love colony had long been discontinued, one of the older community leaders acknowledged the positive attributes of the free love advocates once living in the area:

As a matter of fact, the members of the community, though dreamers, were conspicuous for intelligence, industry and good citizenship. . . In their hands the waste places of the town became its garden spots. They were the pioneers in various industrial enterprises. They were quiet and law-abiding: and not least among their virtues was their capacity for thinking well of others and minding their own business.12

Through their integrity and contributions to community and commerce, the free love followers had overcome their neighbors’ hesitation, and the two groups lived in peace.

Although the utopian colonies eventually disbanded, Berlin Heights remained a place where free love followers could go to find people who believed as they did. Over time the number of free love advocates increased. One of the newcomers, Joseph Owram, would play a pivotal role in Jennie Starr’s future.

Joseph Owram grew up in Barnsley, England. A relatively small and somewhat frail child, he had three brothers and a sister. Joseph’s parents wanted to ensure their sons learned a trade, so in 1840 when Joseph was fourteen, his parents apprenticed him to a tailor. For seven years Joseph spent long hours sitting cross-legged on a bench, learning to sew instead of working in the out-of-doors he loved. In 1847 he turned twenty-one and finished his apprenticeship.

Free to earn his own living, Joseph decided to immigrate to the United States. As he prepared to leave England, he packed the scissors and tools vital to his trade, including a heavy black iron.13 The iron had a swinging door at the back so the hollow base could be filled with hot coals and emptied when the ashes cooled.

Since Joseph’s father had already visited the United States at least once looking for work, Joseph had some idea of what to expect when he arrived. Little is known about Joseph’s early years in the United States, since family records yield little information about how or where he lived. He married an Englishwoman named Harriet (Hattie) about 1854, and the two settled in Burlington Flats, New York, where they had two children, George and Alice.

Burlington Flats was roughly eight miles north of Plainfield, home to Nancy and Lester Starr. Both were small communities so it seems reasonable that the Starrs and Owrams knew each other. In describing Joseph and Jennie’s relationship, granddaughter Alice writes that the two had met while Joseph was still married to Hattie.

Joseph Owram’s history is a bit obscure between 1860 and 1866. At some point during these years he and Hattie separated, although they remained good friends. Both of them were living in Berlin Heights, Ohio, when Jennie Starr was living there, too. There aren’t any records tying Joseph directly to the free love movement, but his lifestyle fits well with their beliefs. His separation and continued friendship with Hattie, his vegetarian diet, and his devotion to the abolition of slavery set him apart from many men of his time. So did his choice of residence. Joseph’s idealism fit well with the goals and aims of free love. So he would have been drawn to Berlin Heights for many reasons.

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