Nelson Antrim Crawford ACE President 1917-18 Kansas State Agricultural College Manhattan, KS
Nelson Crawford was born May 4, 1888, in Miller, South Dakota. He wrote the first college textbook on journalism ethics,
and he was the first director of information for the U. S. Department of
Agriculture. He went to Washington in 1925 when Kansas State College president
William Jardine was appointed Secretary of Agriculture by President Calvin Coolidge.
He graduated from high school in Council Bluffs, Iowa about 1906, and worked as a
writer for newspapers in Iowa and Nebraska until 1909. In 1910, he
received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Iowa, and in 1914, he
received a master's degree from the University of Kansas. He later did graduate
work at Kansas State Agricultural College.
From 1914 to 1925, he was editor of the Kansas Industrialist. During this same
period, he also was on the faculty of Kansas Agricultural College, going from
instructor to head of the Department of Industrial Journalism, head of the
Printing Department and director of the College Press Service.
After three years at USDA in Washington, he returned to Topeka, Kansas in 1928
to work for Household magazine, serving there as editor-in-chief until 1951 when
he became editor and publisher of Author and Journalist. From 1958 until 1963,
he was professor of science writing for the Menninger School of Psychiatry in
Topeka.
Crawford was a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Sigma Kappa, Sigma Delta Chi, the
Masons and the National Press Club in Washington. He died in Topeka June 30,
1963, at the age of 75.
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