Benjamin Crane was a marble mason and clergyman who participated in an official capacity as an Assessor for both the Township and later City of Paterson for the purpose of road building projects. He was also instrumental in the development of the First Free Independent Presbyterian Church on Congress Street in 1843 (now Market Street) and served on the Board of Trustees for the First Presbyterian Church later in the 1870s. He was active in the abolitionist and temperance movements in New Jersey, as a ranking member of the Liberty Party, the New Jersey Anti-Slavery Society and later as a Republican. Crane was also a founding shareholder to the establishment of the Paterson Daily and Weekly Press newspaper during the Civil War in 1863, along with many of the other Patersonians at the time who were “devoted to the support of the general government in its endeavor to put down the great Rebellion against human freedom. . .” The paper was set up to be “an advocate of the principles of the Union Republican party” and its first office was set up on the southwest corner of Broadway and Main Street under a publication contract with William Wright and George W. Chiswell, who were established publishers in Paterson by this point.
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