From his 1919 passport. I slipped a parenthetical caveat into the last entry—and that points to another Fortean. I said that the final substantive mention of Albert Cushing Crehore appeared in Doubt 31. That was necessary because Albert Crehore was briefly mentioned a few years later, but only as a matter of introducing another Fortean: John Davenport Crehore. No, not that John Davenport Crehore, Albert’s father. This was John Davenport Crehore, his nephew, eldest son (and second born child, of nine) to Albert’s brother and business partner, William Williams Crehore. A tangential Fortean.
John Davenport Crehore was born 14 May 1891 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, descendent of a family that could trace its roots to the American Revolution. At the time, his father was building bridges in the area around Pottstown. By 1900, the family was living in New Jersey, where William was a civil engineer. His mother, Anna (Ballard), was from New York. I cannot find him in the 1910 census, but a brief biography of him in the magazine Aviation reports that, after being educated at public schools in New Jersey, he went to work for the Guaranty Trust Company of New York. These were the years when William and Albert were working together on their teletype business. (A 1913 squib in the Yale yearbook on William confirmed John’s profession.)
John Davenport Crehore was born 14 May 1891 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, descendent of a family that could trace its roots to the American Revolution. At the time, his father was building bridges in the area around Pottstown. By 1900, the family was living in New Jersey, where William was a civil engineer. His mother, Anna (Ballard), was from New York. I cannot find him in the 1910 census, but a brief biography of him in the magazine Aviation reports that, after being educated at public schools in New Jersey, he went to work for the Guaranty Trust Company of New York. These were the years when William and Albert were working together on their teletype business. (A 1913 squib in the Yale yearbook on William confirmed John’s profession.)
Somehow, he found his way to Evanston, Illinois—at least that’s where he registered for the Great War in 1917. At the time, he was a clerk for a manufacturing concern. He joined the U.S. Army in November, and remained through September 1919, in service, then, when his father died. A flying cadet from 30 November 1917 to 28 May 1918, he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant; Crehore was part of the A.E.F. from 5 October 1918 to 12 August 1919, working as an observation pilot. (His brother, Austen, is the more famous pilot in the family, joining the French military after hearing problems prevented his serving in the American army or navy.) After the war, he continued flying as a hobby and worked at the National City Bank of New York until December 1921 (again according to Aviation: I cannot find him in the 1920 census, either). According to his passport applications, he spent much of his time working for the bank in Venezuela.
In December 1921, he went into business for himself as a “promoter.” Whatever that word meant, the career doesn’t seem to have lasted long, as three years later he was working as a bank clerk again and traveling south again—to the Dominican Republic. The 1930 census had him clerking (again) but for an aviation company—and that may have been the nature of his promotion in 1921; his brother had retired from the sport in 1919 after an accident, but John continued his fondness for aviation. Later, in September 1930, John married Amy Norma Pierson, both of them 39 years old.
The next years of his life were peripatetic, and only vaguely recorded. He was in Florida—Orlando, perhaps elsewhere—in the 1930s, at least until late 1935, since that is where he registered for social security but not until after 1934, because that is around when they had a son, John Crehore, Jr., who was born in New Hampshire. Apparently, the elder Crehore suffered ill health; that may have been why he and Norma and Junior moved to Florida; it was certainly why he ended up in the Sun Diet Sanatorium, East Aurora, New York. This was a private institution that did not accept people with infectious (or extreme nervous) disorders, and offered naturopathic cures: restricted (and compatible) diets, exercise, sunlight. Norma and John, Jr., lived in the Sanatorium as well. This stay precipitated a change in his life: while at Sun Diet, he listed his occupation as bank executive (although he wasn’t working that year); two years later, living in Maryland, he registered for World War II and gave his occupation as professional writer and researcher. As early as 1940, he listed himself as a researcher in the advertising section of magazines, a practice which continued through the decade. He offered his services in the American Bookbinder (1942) and Publishers Weekly (1944) as a ghost writer and researcher—including research at the Library of Congress. Same in The Saturday Review of Literature. In 1945, he advertised himself as able to get copies of any magazine in Survey Graphic. In 1946, he also was accepted into the Sons of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C. chapter.
In 1947, he had relocated from the Washington, D.C.-area to Walpole, New Hampshire, birth-home of his grandfather. He was still advertising his services—in the likes of Saturday Review and The New Republic—as a clearinghouse for periodicals. He could obtain any number of any periodical, and billed only after he was successful. According to later sources, he was also a practitioner of organic farming—no surprise after his stay at Sun Diet—but I have not been able to find him writing on the subject anywhere during this period. Indeed, I don’t know much about this, the most Fortean era of his life, or his later years.
In 1956, he published Mental Telepathy (I haven’t read the book). There are claims he had written elsewhere on telepathy; I haven’t found any evidence of this writing beside the fact that Mental Telepathy was listed as #11 in the series “Thoughts for Thinkers.” The book was published in Cleveland, which may have been a family connection or may have indicated he had moved back to Ohio by that time. As was his family’s wont, he rooted telepathy in electronic phenomena. And, as was his family’s wont, he advertised it in popular science. (His grandfather’s tome on the engineering qualities of girders had been promoted there as well.) Ads for it ran in that, and similar magazines, well into the sixties:
“MENTAL telepathy is now plausibly explainable by simplest electronic principles. 10,000-word serious treatise, with precise suggestions for practicing. $5.00. Refunded if dissatisfied. I’ve progressed fantastically; received two cash gifts: $5,000. Fn anyway, and if it works, you’re rich” (July 1956)
“MENTAL telepathy: Professional methods explained. Simple 25,000-word textbook gives complete course: also scientific theory how thought waves travel and increase influence, personal magnetism, prosperity, advancement. $5.00: refunded if dissatisfied. Circular free” (August 1956)
“BOOK ‘Mental Telepathy.’ Fourth printing! Teaches: Telepathy, Mental Healing, Mind Reading, Influencing Others, Witchcraft. Explains: Personal Magnetism, Prophecy, Radionics. Many Testimonials. $4.95 from dealers, worldwide, or Postpaid. Money-Back” (March 1963)
“‘MENTAL TELEPATHY’ will help you influence people and enjoy life much more. Buy this book. $4.95. Bookstores, or post-paid, refund guaranteed” (November 1964)
In the late 1960s, Crehore was on to another issue, and on the move again. He was advertising a plan to simplify taxation—another Fortean mainstay from Thayer’s days—giving the mailing address as Washington, D.C. That advertisement also ran in Popular Science. He was offering the booklet for $1.00. It was number 12 in the series “Thoughts for Thinkers.” I have not seen this pamphlet either. Crehore’s tax ideas date back at least to 1943, when he testified before the House of Representatives in favor of a national 10% sales tax. In 1967, he contributed a statement on the President’s tax plan, presenting himself as a citizen of New Hampshire, temporarily residing in Washington, D.C. As glossed in the press, the Crehore Plan—as he called it, echoes of the Crehore Atom—advocated a 20 percent sales tax (with a certain percentage going back to the states and cities), a raised exemption (handled by coupons) and negotiated taxes on corporations.
In the late 1960s, Crehore and Norma moved to Arizona. His tax reform plan was reprinted by the House Ways and Means Committee. (And submitted again in 1978 during tax reform hearings.) While in Arizona, he continued publishing under the “Thoughts forThinkers” banner, although I can find no extant copies or even catalog entries. According to the 1979 Book Publishers Directly, his “Thoughts for Thinkers” series had started in 1941; in 1973, he published 2 books; 1974, 2; 1975, 2; 1976, 2. These were on philosophy, religion, and the occult. He was also writing more publicly on matters political. Crehore had two letters published in The Arizona Republic. The second complained that smokers puffing cigarette smokers into the faces of others was as bad as spitting in front of them—but was unfortunately more socially acceptable. The first—published 12 March 1968—was on a touchier subject, and showed him staking out some very conservative positions:
“On Sunday, March 3, on TV, six mayors agree in effect with the President’s Crime Commission that money—possible billions—would be the only solution to riotous disturbance. May I submit solutions—some applicable at small cost?
On Tuesday, Feb. 27, The Arizona Republic published a letter calling for more backbone in our leaders. November 1968 is when politicians are going to be given shock treatment by majorities to teach them not to pander to minorities.
A generation of liberal party paternalism has babied minorities that, if put on their own and given a fair chance, would by now be assets instead of drags on their communities.
It should be hard to qualify for tax-money handouts. Right to work should take precedence over right to strike, If anyone could be hired at what he and the job were worth, thousands who now roam the streets could be hired—if the red tape, the bookkeeping, the risk of theft, industrial accident, etc., could all be brought within reason.
Schools should concentrate on basic education without frilly poppycock. Social studies should teach honesty, high principle, law observance, in place of ‘adjustment’ to prevailing evil. Crime, big and little, should be punished without escape.
Rioting under current inciters is revolution—war—and should be fought, with death on the spot if the available modern deterrents don’t work: such torments as teargas, mace, sneezing sprays, loathsome chemical eye, nose, and mouth washes, non-unstickable glue, indelible stains, scalding water, ‘banana peel’ sprayed on pavement, and barbed wire, any style.
Rioting has followed unwise concentrations of population where insufficient employment os available. We talk of coercing other countries to give little homesteads to their poor; we should do the same, in addition to rebuilding slums.
We should offer land on very easy terms with garden space, clustered with-in walking distance of small industrial plants and schools Such investment of tax-money would bring profit, economic and sociological; present doles ruin initiative.
How long would it take? A generation. But the president’s and the mayors’ plans would never solve the problem—only worsen it!
The outstanding disgrace of the Crime Commission members and the six mayors, and the President himself, is that nobody had the visceral vitality, the endocrine potency, to acknowledge and discuss the one fundamental factor in the problem which cannot be dismissed or compromised with—racial integration. They dare accuse the white race of racism and ignore the violent agitation under that label by black race demagogues.
Nowhere in the animal kingdom is there ‘integration’ (miscegenation!). Therefore, in logic, the human race of animals should not practice it. Nobody should say races are not equal; they are so different—like meat and potatoes, both fine foods—that they simply cannot be equated overall. However, each possesses specific factors in which it excels, which the other(s0 cannot match, cannot equal. And ‘civilization’ of today is a contribution of the white race almost entirely at the top level. Filth and squalor in Negro districts is not so much due to poverty as to racial untidiness, lack of refinement and pride.
So to force whites to live with or close to Negroes is generally speaking absolutely wrong, unfair economically, sociologically, hygienically. And the inevitable mixing of the races is therefore a lowering of the quality of the white race—which always shows up in lesser ability to preserve the high white standards of civilization.
Demonstrably, if integration is allowed to blackmail its way into out society our government at all levels will deteriorate due to lowered caliber of leaders, and our whole population will sink to low-level life instead of raising the present low levels higher.”
Crehore died 13 February 1989, aged 97, in Alameda county, California. He was buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.
Crehore’s connection to Forteanism is tangential at best. It is likely that he read Fort, but if Fort influenced his studies on mental telepathy, Tiffany Thayer did not see it. He doesn’t seem to have been associated with other Fortean-leaning Societies. His interests, though, were strictly mainstream Fortean: under Thayer, the Society expressed an interest in organic farming and concomitant fear of modern, industrialized and processed foods. (Thayer and Eric Frank Russell spent ann inordinate amount of time on the subject of poisonous foods in Doubt.) Tax reform was also the subject of some Fortean activity, although most of this seemed to be based around the ideas of Henry George, rather than a national sales tax. And telepathy, whether rooted in science or more esoteric practices, was a common topic in Doubt, similarly Fortean publications such as Fate and among Forteans. Thus, it’s not a surprise that Crehore found his way to the Society. The connection may have been facilitated by his uncle, too, whose atomic theory had come to Thayer’s attention, and with whom Thayer seems to have had some correspondence.
There are a couple of very brief mentions of Crehore the younger in the forties—Doubt 15 (summer 1946) mentions him in passing and the following issue referred did, too. Thayer recommended Free Soul, a journal of personal liberation put out by Don M. Flower in Hartland, Vermont—and Thayer declared Vermont a “nest of Forteans” with Scott Nearing, R. Kolvoord, and the Crehores—presumably thinking the Crehore’s ancestral home of Walpole, New Hampshire was close enough to Vermont. There were no more mentions of Crehore for over a decade.
Predictably, that notice was tagged to the publication of Crehore’s “Mental Telepathy,” which Thayer praised in issue 55 (November 1957). He noted that Crehore based telepathy on electricity, but still found the book worth contemplating: “both God and Science are mentioned prominently, but not too dogmatically, and the book is recommended to Forteans who would like to see these studies progress with their feet on the ground.” Thayer ended with a brief note that John was Albert’s nephew—for those who remembered the Crehore atom. That had not been mentioned in Doubt for some time, either, and this call-out to Albert Cushing Crehore was the last mention of him or his atom. It was also the last mention of John Davenport. Whether John submitted other information that wasn’t used, or just never did anything else with the Society but promoted his book, I don’t know. The overriding impression, though, is that Crehore and the Society were just two ships passing in the night, connected by that one slice of darkness, but otherwise on their own journeys.
In December 1921, he went into business for himself as a “promoter.” Whatever that word meant, the career doesn’t seem to have lasted long, as three years later he was working as a bank clerk again and traveling south again—to the Dominican Republic. The 1930 census had him clerking (again) but for an aviation company—and that may have been the nature of his promotion in 1921; his brother had retired from the sport in 1919 after an accident, but John continued his fondness for aviation. Later, in September 1930, John married Amy Norma Pierson, both of them 39 years old.
The next years of his life were peripatetic, and only vaguely recorded. He was in Florida—Orlando, perhaps elsewhere—in the 1930s, at least until late 1935, since that is where he registered for social security but not until after 1934, because that is around when they had a son, John Crehore, Jr., who was born in New Hampshire. Apparently, the elder Crehore suffered ill health; that may have been why he and Norma and Junior moved to Florida; it was certainly why he ended up in the Sun Diet Sanatorium, East Aurora, New York. This was a private institution that did not accept people with infectious (or extreme nervous) disorders, and offered naturopathic cures: restricted (and compatible) diets, exercise, sunlight. Norma and John, Jr., lived in the Sanatorium as well. This stay precipitated a change in his life: while at Sun Diet, he listed his occupation as bank executive (although he wasn’t working that year); two years later, living in Maryland, he registered for World War II and gave his occupation as professional writer and researcher. As early as 1940, he listed himself as a researcher in the advertising section of magazines, a practice which continued through the decade. He offered his services in the American Bookbinder (1942) and Publishers Weekly (1944) as a ghost writer and researcher—including research at the Library of Congress. Same in The Saturday Review of Literature. In 1945, he advertised himself as able to get copies of any magazine in Survey Graphic. In 1946, he also was accepted into the Sons of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C. chapter.
In 1947, he had relocated from the Washington, D.C.-area to Walpole, New Hampshire, birth-home of his grandfather. He was still advertising his services—in the likes of Saturday Review and The New Republic—as a clearinghouse for periodicals. He could obtain any number of any periodical, and billed only after he was successful. According to later sources, he was also a practitioner of organic farming—no surprise after his stay at Sun Diet—but I have not been able to find him writing on the subject anywhere during this period. Indeed, I don’t know much about this, the most Fortean era of his life, or his later years.
In 1956, he published Mental Telepathy (I haven’t read the book). There are claims he had written elsewhere on telepathy; I haven’t found any evidence of this writing beside the fact that Mental Telepathy was listed as #11 in the series “Thoughts for Thinkers.” The book was published in Cleveland, which may have been a family connection or may have indicated he had moved back to Ohio by that time. As was his family’s wont, he rooted telepathy in electronic phenomena. And, as was his family’s wont, he advertised it in popular science. (His grandfather’s tome on the engineering qualities of girders had been promoted there as well.) Ads for it ran in that, and similar magazines, well into the sixties:
“MENTAL telepathy is now plausibly explainable by simplest electronic principles. 10,000-word serious treatise, with precise suggestions for practicing. $5.00. Refunded if dissatisfied. I’ve progressed fantastically; received two cash gifts: $5,000. Fn anyway, and if it works, you’re rich” (July 1956)
“MENTAL telepathy: Professional methods explained. Simple 25,000-word textbook gives complete course: also scientific theory how thought waves travel and increase influence, personal magnetism, prosperity, advancement. $5.00: refunded if dissatisfied. Circular free” (August 1956)
“BOOK ‘Mental Telepathy.’ Fourth printing! Teaches: Telepathy, Mental Healing, Mind Reading, Influencing Others, Witchcraft. Explains: Personal Magnetism, Prophecy, Radionics. Many Testimonials. $4.95 from dealers, worldwide, or Postpaid. Money-Back” (March 1963)
“‘MENTAL TELEPATHY’ will help you influence people and enjoy life much more. Buy this book. $4.95. Bookstores, or post-paid, refund guaranteed” (November 1964)
In the late 1960s, Crehore was on to another issue, and on the move again. He was advertising a plan to simplify taxation—another Fortean mainstay from Thayer’s days—giving the mailing address as Washington, D.C. That advertisement also ran in Popular Science. He was offering the booklet for $1.00. It was number 12 in the series “Thoughts for Thinkers.” I have not seen this pamphlet either. Crehore’s tax ideas date back at least to 1943, when he testified before the House of Representatives in favor of a national 10% sales tax. In 1967, he contributed a statement on the President’s tax plan, presenting himself as a citizen of New Hampshire, temporarily residing in Washington, D.C. As glossed in the press, the Crehore Plan—as he called it, echoes of the Crehore Atom—advocated a 20 percent sales tax (with a certain percentage going back to the states and cities), a raised exemption (handled by coupons) and negotiated taxes on corporations.
In the late 1960s, Crehore and Norma moved to Arizona. His tax reform plan was reprinted by the House Ways and Means Committee. (And submitted again in 1978 during tax reform hearings.) While in Arizona, he continued publishing under the “Thoughts forThinkers” banner, although I can find no extant copies or even catalog entries. According to the 1979 Book Publishers Directly, his “Thoughts for Thinkers” series had started in 1941; in 1973, he published 2 books; 1974, 2; 1975, 2; 1976, 2. These were on philosophy, religion, and the occult. He was also writing more publicly on matters political. Crehore had two letters published in The Arizona Republic. The second complained that smokers puffing cigarette smokers into the faces of others was as bad as spitting in front of them—but was unfortunately more socially acceptable. The first—published 12 March 1968—was on a touchier subject, and showed him staking out some very conservative positions:
“On Sunday, March 3, on TV, six mayors agree in effect with the President’s Crime Commission that money—possible billions—would be the only solution to riotous disturbance. May I submit solutions—some applicable at small cost?
On Tuesday, Feb. 27, The Arizona Republic published a letter calling for more backbone in our leaders. November 1968 is when politicians are going to be given shock treatment by majorities to teach them not to pander to minorities.
A generation of liberal party paternalism has babied minorities that, if put on their own and given a fair chance, would by now be assets instead of drags on their communities.
It should be hard to qualify for tax-money handouts. Right to work should take precedence over right to strike, If anyone could be hired at what he and the job were worth, thousands who now roam the streets could be hired—if the red tape, the bookkeeping, the risk of theft, industrial accident, etc., could all be brought within reason.
Schools should concentrate on basic education without frilly poppycock. Social studies should teach honesty, high principle, law observance, in place of ‘adjustment’ to prevailing evil. Crime, big and little, should be punished without escape.
Rioting under current inciters is revolution—war—and should be fought, with death on the spot if the available modern deterrents don’t work: such torments as teargas, mace, sneezing sprays, loathsome chemical eye, nose, and mouth washes, non-unstickable glue, indelible stains, scalding water, ‘banana peel’ sprayed on pavement, and barbed wire, any style.
Rioting has followed unwise concentrations of population where insufficient employment os available. We talk of coercing other countries to give little homesteads to their poor; we should do the same, in addition to rebuilding slums.
We should offer land on very easy terms with garden space, clustered with-in walking distance of small industrial plants and schools Such investment of tax-money would bring profit, economic and sociological; present doles ruin initiative.
How long would it take? A generation. But the president’s and the mayors’ plans would never solve the problem—only worsen it!
The outstanding disgrace of the Crime Commission members and the six mayors, and the President himself, is that nobody had the visceral vitality, the endocrine potency, to acknowledge and discuss the one fundamental factor in the problem which cannot be dismissed or compromised with—racial integration. They dare accuse the white race of racism and ignore the violent agitation under that label by black race demagogues.
Nowhere in the animal kingdom is there ‘integration’ (miscegenation!). Therefore, in logic, the human race of animals should not practice it. Nobody should say races are not equal; they are so different—like meat and potatoes, both fine foods—that they simply cannot be equated overall. However, each possesses specific factors in which it excels, which the other(s0 cannot match, cannot equal. And ‘civilization’ of today is a contribution of the white race almost entirely at the top level. Filth and squalor in Negro districts is not so much due to poverty as to racial untidiness, lack of refinement and pride.
So to force whites to live with or close to Negroes is generally speaking absolutely wrong, unfair economically, sociologically, hygienically. And the inevitable mixing of the races is therefore a lowering of the quality of the white race—which always shows up in lesser ability to preserve the high white standards of civilization.
Demonstrably, if integration is allowed to blackmail its way into out society our government at all levels will deteriorate due to lowered caliber of leaders, and our whole population will sink to low-level life instead of raising the present low levels higher.”
Crehore died 13 February 1989, aged 97, in Alameda county, California. He was buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.
Crehore’s connection to Forteanism is tangential at best. It is likely that he read Fort, but if Fort influenced his studies on mental telepathy, Tiffany Thayer did not see it. He doesn’t seem to have been associated with other Fortean-leaning Societies. His interests, though, were strictly mainstream Fortean: under Thayer, the Society expressed an interest in organic farming and concomitant fear of modern, industrialized and processed foods. (Thayer and Eric Frank Russell spent ann inordinate amount of time on the subject of poisonous foods in Doubt.) Tax reform was also the subject of some Fortean activity, although most of this seemed to be based around the ideas of Henry George, rather than a national sales tax. And telepathy, whether rooted in science or more esoteric practices, was a common topic in Doubt, similarly Fortean publications such as Fate and among Forteans. Thus, it’s not a surprise that Crehore found his way to the Society. The connection may have been facilitated by his uncle, too, whose atomic theory had come to Thayer’s attention, and with whom Thayer seems to have had some correspondence.
There are a couple of very brief mentions of Crehore the younger in the forties—Doubt 15 (summer 1946) mentions him in passing and the following issue referred did, too. Thayer recommended Free Soul, a journal of personal liberation put out by Don M. Flower in Hartland, Vermont—and Thayer declared Vermont a “nest of Forteans” with Scott Nearing, R. Kolvoord, and the Crehores—presumably thinking the Crehore’s ancestral home of Walpole, New Hampshire was close enough to Vermont. There were no more mentions of Crehore for over a decade.
Predictably, that notice was tagged to the publication of Crehore’s “Mental Telepathy,” which Thayer praised in issue 55 (November 1957). He noted that Crehore based telepathy on electricity, but still found the book worth contemplating: “both God and Science are mentioned prominently, but not too dogmatically, and the book is recommended to Forteans who would like to see these studies progress with their feet on the ground.” Thayer ended with a brief note that John was Albert’s nephew—for those who remembered the Crehore atom. That had not been mentioned in Doubt for some time, either, and this call-out to Albert Cushing Crehore was the last mention of him or his atom. It was also the last mention of John Davenport. Whether John submitted other information that wasn’t used, or just never did anything else with the Society but promoted his book, I don’t know. The overriding impression, though, is that Crehore and the Society were just two ships passing in the night, connected by that one slice of darkness, but otherwise on their own journeys.
