JOHN AUBREY CREWITT, M.D.

JOHN AUBREY CREWITT, M.D., of Newtown, was born at Reidsville, Mifflin county, Pennsylvania, March 29, 1853, and is a son of Alfred and Jane (DORLAND) CREWITT, the former of English and the later of Holland descent.

            Richard Chandler CREWITT, grandfather of Dr. CREWITT, was born in Maryland and married at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1805, Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander BERRYHILL, of Harrisburg, where she was born January 5, 1777.  Their children were Fannie, Matilda, Aubrey, and Alfred, The father of Dr. CREWITT.  Alfred CREWITT was born in 1811.  He became a prominent iron master in Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania.  He was a man of prominence in that county, where he resided for many years.  He and his family were prominent members of the Presbyterian church, as were his ancestors for three hundred years.  He died April 5, 1857, while holding the office of county treasurer.  His wife was Jane DORLAND, daughter of Isaac and Jane (MCNAMARA) DORLAND, who died May 8, 1884.

            The paternal ancestor of Jane (DORLAND) CREWITT, was Jan Gerretse DORLAND, who emigrated from Holland in the year 1652, and settled at Brooklyn, Long Island, where he was an elder in the Dutch reformed church.  He was twice married.  By his first wife, who was a JANS, he had three children: Maeretje, baptized April 11, 1672; Geertje, baptized August 19, 1674; and Gerret.  He married (second) Annettje REMSEN, born April 11, 1669, daughter of Rem Jansen VANDERBEECK, a native of Drenthe, Holland, who married December 21, 1642, Jannetje, daughter of Jores RAPALIE.  His descendants dropped the surname and were known by the name of REMSEN, signifying sons of Rem.  John (or Jan) DORLANDT, baptized at Brooklyn church, March 20, 1681, married (first) Marretje (Mary) and his son John, baptized at Brooklyn, July 17, 1701,  was the great-great-great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch.  The other children were:  Cornelia, baptized August 7, 1705;  Lambert, George, Jacob, Isaac, Hermina, Eve, and Abraham. John DORLANDT, Sr.,  married (second) in 1718 Barbara AUKES VAN NUYS, daughter of Auke JANSE VAN NUYS, who was baptized April 21,1702.  In 1720 he left Brooklyn, and after a short stay among his relatives on the Raritan, in New Jersey, removed to Moreland township, Philadelphia, now Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, and purchased in 1726 a farm from William BRITTIAN, near Somerton.  Lambert DORLANDT married in September, 1731, Elizabeth BRITTIAN; George married in 1735 Catharine WHITEMAN; Jacob married in 1741 Ann HEWITT; Isaac, in 1753, Margaret JOHNSON; Hermina married Charles HUFTE; Eve married in 1751 John BRITTIAN, all the above having accompanied their father to Pennsylvania.  Elizabeth BRITTIAN, who married Lambert DORLANDT, was a granddaughter of Nathaniel BRITTIAN, an early English settler in Kings county, L.I., where he married in 1660 Anna, daughter of Nicholas STILWELL, and later removed to Staten Island, where he died in 1683.  Of his ten children several removed to Pennsylvania at about the same date as the DORLANDT family, and have numerous descendants in Bucks county.  The children of Lambert and Elizabeth (BRITTIAN)  DORLANDT were Nathaniel, John, Lambert, Esther, all born in Moreland.

            John DORLAND, the great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was born at Somerton in 1754.  He was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and an active man in the community.  He married Ann ROBINSON and had children, Joseph; Rebecca, Isaac, Sarah, Eve, Elizabeth, Jacob, John, Jr., Mary, Ann.  Isaac DORLAND, the grandfather of Dr. CREWITT, was born at Somerton, December 8, 1782, and married February 25, 1811, Jane McNAMARA, of Scotch-Irish descent, who bore him eight children, of whom the third was Jane, who married Alfred CREWITT, and became the mother of the subject of this sketch.  The children of Alfred and Jane (DORLAND) CREWITT were; Isaac, Elizabeth, Howard, Andrew, Jane, Edward, William; John Aubrey, the subject of this sketch, born March 29, 1853; Thomas.  Isaac and Howard CREWITT were both in the service of their country during the Civil war, the former holding the rank of lieutenant and the latter that of sergeant.

            Dr. CREWITT was reared at Huntingdon and attended the public school there.  He filled the position of mail agent for three years, and in the meantime studied medicine with Dr. D. P. Miller, of Huntingdon.  In 1874 he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Baltimore, Maryland, from which he graduated in 1876.  In the year of his graduation he located at Robertsdale, Pa., where he was in active practice for eight years.  In 1884 he came to Newtown, Bucks county, where he has since practiced his chosen profession with success, having built up a large practice.  He is a member of and was president in 1905 of the Bucks County Medical Society, and is a member of the Lehigh Valley Medical Association, the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. He served five years in Bucks county as school director.  He has been a member of the Presbyterian church for thirty-seven years, and a trustee of the Newtown Presbyterian church for eighteen years.

            Dr. CREWITT married, December 18, 1878, Joanna Bayard STEWART, daughter of Charles and Elizabeth (BAYARD) STEWART, of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and they are the parents of three children:  Alfred Bayard CREWITT, B.S., is a medical student at the university of Pennsylvania; Lillian, at home; and John Aubrey, Jr., who is a student at the George School.  Alfred Bayard CREWITT became an active worker in the temperance cause before he was sixteen years of age, and was one of the organizers of the Young People’s Temperance Association of Bucks county in 1899, and president of the Association until the fall of 1904, when he resigned and his brother, John Aubrey CREWITT, Jr., was elected president.

Test taken from page 496-497 of:

Davis, William W. H., A.M., History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania [New York-Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1905] Volume III

Transcribed August 2004 by Joan Lollis of, IN. as part of the Bucks Co., Pa., Early Family Project, www.rootsweb.com/~pabucks/bucksindex.html

Published October 2004 on the Bucks County, Pa., USGenWeb pages at www.rootsweb.com/~pabucks/