Samuel Francis Cravens (1860-1906) - Choral Director and Music Instructor

PCA Archives

Professor S. F. Cravens, a highly-regarded choral director and music instructor, founded the Cravens School of Music with his wife in 1903.  Although it lasted less than five years, it was the first of its kind in the Arizona Territory.

Cravens, born 1860 in Missouri, was the son of Joshua Cravens and Mary Catherine Hulett.  By 1884, he was a music professor in Albany, Missouri.

Samuel very likely met his future bride, Etta Dent, through their shared interest in music.  The daughter of William and Lucinda Dent, she was something of a music prodigy.  Samuel and Etta were married on April 19, 1887, in Manhattan, Kansas.

The young couple opened the first Cravens School of Music in Topeka, Kansas.  In 1892, they spent a season in Europe, studying under Oscar Beringer in London.  Upon their return to the States as directors of music at the University of Denver.

Around 1895, Samuel was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the Cravens decided to move to Ottawa, Kansas, where the winter weather was not as severe.  By November 1895, Samuel was a professor of vocal music at Ottawa University, a co-ed, Christian university in Ottawa, Kansas.  Etta Dent Cravens, an accomplished pianist, also taught there.

Samuel’s fragile health led the Cravens to alternate between their home in Ottawa during the summer and Phoenix, Arizona, in the winter.  They opened a new music school in Phoenix so they would have an income with which to support themselves while there.

In spite of his chronic health problems, Samuel Craven still enjoyed some musical triumphs during the summers.   The most important one was the Kansas Music Festival in Ottawa, a multi-day event for which Craven organized and directed twelve different choral groups totaling a thousand singers.

Samuel died on October 31, 1906, and was buried in Porter Cemetery. 

After his death, Etta returned to Kansas reopened the Cravens School of Music in Emporia.  Its recitals and concerts were widely attended by the public.  She died of breast cancer on April 26, 1921, in Emporia, Kansas.

----by Donna Carr