Eliza P. Robbins Crafts: Pioneer of Education

After the arrival of the Saints in the Great Basin in 1847, Prophet Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly called the Mormon Church), sent out large groups of settlers to colonize the land all around them. One of the regions to which settlers were sent was San Bernardino, California. In late 1857, the San Bernardino settlers were given strict instructions from President Young to sell their property for anything they could get and to travel back to Salt Lake.

The area had sunken to such a low level that the Saints were immediately taken advantage of by their rough and rowdy neighbors. Land sold at unbelievably cheap rates as the Saints tried to get back to Salt Lake.

There were a precious few decent people who lived in the area, however, who helped to keep it from falling completely apart after the departure of the Saints. Two of these people were Eliza P. Robbins Crafts and her husband, Professor Ellison Robbins.

Both of these individuals had steady backgrounds in education and they were soon recruited, in 1858, by Dr. Ben Barton to take charge of the school system, as it existed, in San Bernardino. They taught in two rooms, Professor Robbins teaching the intermediate grades and Eliza teaching the primary grades. This religious couple also founded the town’s first non-denominational Sunday School.

When Professor Ellison died suddenly in 1864 from pneumonia, Eliza remarried a year later. Her new husband was an old friend of the couple, Myron Harwood Crafts. She continued to run the school, but when Crafts also died in 1886, Eliza was 61, and knew she could not keep up the schools as she once had.

Though Eliza sold the schools, she did not forget her education. After her retirement, she compiled a history book of the area titled, “Pioneer Days in the San Bernardino Valley.” This book, published in 1906, became an important tool for future educators in the area. It also served as a valuable history, chronicling small details like how many stores there were when she first arrived in 1858, and where they were, to large details like her description of the flood that came through Southern California in 1862.

Strong figures like Eliza P. Robbins Crafts were key elements in colonizing (and civilizing) the West, as were the Saints.