Allen P. Crawford was born to Robert and Blanche Pruitt Crawford in Honea Path, South Carolina on June 3, 1914. As a student at Furman University, he studied history and English, graduating in 1936.

After leaving Furman, Crawford earned graduate degrees from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, Union Seminary, and Columbia University. During this time, he worked with the American Baptist Convention as a religious education consultant, and pastored churches in Flint, Michigan and Elmira and Garden City, New York. 

In 1947, Crawford joined the public relations staff of the Ford Motor Company in New York City as an editor. He remained with Ford until his retirement in 1971.

Upon retiring, Allen Crawford returned to Honea Path, purchased the schoolhouse he had attended as a child, and transformed it into a home and art museum he called West View Gallery. He dedicated himself to studying and collecting fine American art and antiques, eventually amassing a collection called one of the largest of its kind in the South by the Atlanta Journal. Over the years, Crawford donated much of his art and antique collection to Furman University.

Allen P. Crawford died on March 17, 2010 in Honea Path.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was born in Missouri in 1835. Twain is best known for his books that revolve around the Mississippi River. He spent a good deal of his life in the northeast and spent 20 summers at Quarry Farm, the home of his wife’s sister in Elmira, New York. It was in Elmira that Twain wrote portions of some of his most famous books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The small outbuilding Twain used as his study at Quarry Farm was moved to Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies in 1952.

After Mark Twain died in Connecticut on April 21, 1910, he was interred in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery in his family’s plot. In addition to Twain, the plot also includes the graves of his Elmira native wife, Olivia Langdon, all four of his children (three of whom proceeded him in death), and his only grandchild.