LUCY CRAWFORD'S HISTORY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

Edited and withan Introduction by Prof, of English Emeritus Stearns Morse. Hanover, N.H.:Dartmouth Publications, 1966. 279 pp.$6.00.

Lucy Crawford rates at least three prizes as the mother of five sons and five daughters raised in the early-nineteenth century privations of the White Mountains, as a wife able to write a successful history in the first person of her notable husband, and as one of the first keen observers and recorders of the White Mountain scene.

Stearns Morse earns full credit for revising, as suited his learned judgment, the original "Crawford's History of the White Mountains" of 1845 with the great help of manuscripts revised by Lucy as time marched on while she still hoped for encouragement and funds to publish a second edition.

Frederick C. Crawford, a surviving member of the far-flung Crawford Family of Guildhall, Vt., Lancaster, N.H., and way stations (including Crawford Notch), deserves our lasting appreciation for making available the marked-up final manuscript which is the basis for Professor Morse's successful efforts to gild the lily.

Crawford's History of the White Mountains has always been considered the epic record of their early history. No private collection of such books is considered complete without it, even the long out-of-print reprint of 1883. Now, thanks to the two gentlemen mentioned above, an up-dated edition is available in ample quantity to satisfy the literary appetites of the many who thrive on White Mountain memoirs.

Dartmouth's current interest is not limited to the editing and publication of this "History of the White Mountains," because many of her alumni appear in its contents. There was Charles Jesse Stuart, 1809, one of seven who climbed Mount Washington in 1820 with Ethan A. Crawford as guide to name several peaks of the Presidential Range and determine their elevation. (See "Mt. Washington Pathfinder" in ALUMNI MAGAZINE of January 1956.)

The same adventurous alumnus shows up, albeit spelled "Stewart," in the annals of 1821 as a companion of three young ladies from Portsmouth who wished to be "the first females who placed their feet on this high and new celebrated place, Mount Washington." The ubiquitous alumnus was then engaged to Eliza, one of the Austin sisters, and darned if he didn't marry her the next year in one of the first of many Dartmouth romances in the White Mountains.

A better known alumnus, one Daniel Webster, climbed Mount Washington in 1831 with Ethan Allen Crawford. Lucy's history has carefully preserved Black Dan's typical apostrophe: "Mount Washington, I have come a long distance, have toiled hard to arrive at your summit, and now you seem to give me a cold reception, for which I am extremely sorry, as I shall not have time enough to view this grand prospect which now lies before me, and nothing prevents but the uncomfortable atmosphere in which you reside!"

Such are the many anecdotes faithfully recorded by Lucy and now freshly edited only when needed by Prof. Stearns Morse.

College Forester