The face of another Craig branch.

An illustration faces the biography of Robert Craig in the 1881 History of Hunterdon and Somerset Counties. The man in the portrait was born in 1815 and had lived on the same Tewksbury homestead for most of his life. His biography tells how the estate came down through several generations—and how he chose to spend his own working years.

The Craigs before Robert

In the historian's account, Robert's great-grandfather Moses Craig had come from the north of Ireland with the Presbyterian settlement at Lamington around 1730. Moses purchased land in Tewksbury in 1757 and conveyed it to his son Robert in 1759. That Robert was born in 1734. His son William, born in 1785, acquired the shares of other heirs and passed the property to the younger Robert whose portrait appears in the book.

This branch shared earlier family roots with the Craig line that leads to Margaretta, wife of John Vroom Melick. But the portrayed Robert (born 1815) was not Margaretta's father or her direct ancestor. His biographical sketch is valuable precisely because it offers an authentic face and a life story from the wider family.

What the historian remembered

The book describes Robert as an agriculturalist who stayed close to his family's land. In 1840 he married Elizabeth Field of Lamington. Together they had nine children, four sons and five daughters. Some married and settled nearby; others traveled farther, including to Kansas.

Robert also served Tewksbury on its township committee and as treasurer during the Civil War. The book remembers the practical challenges of raising money for volunteers, a reminder that war affected small communities even when their fields lay far from the fighting.

His father William was described as industrious, reserved and unwilling to accept public office. The contrast is quietly revealing: across generations of the same family, one man avoided civic leadership while his son took on years of township service.

One picture, many generations

Family histories often survive as long lines of names, with few faces to accompany them. Here, an engraving printed in 1881 closes some of that distance. It does not show the ancestors who built the farm, or the Margaretta who brought the Craig name into the Melick household. It shows another person who inherited the same region's work and community ties.

The portrait is one small window into the family that lived alongside Don Melick's forebears—people with their own choices, relationships and histories, connected through a much older Craig lineage.