These included as a member of the legislature, assistant assessor, internal revenue collector, money order clerk in the post office and a number of positions in the New York Custom House.
Thereafter, he published a number of volumes of his own works from collections previously printed in newspapers and magazines in America.
He had four sons who served in World War I, one of which, Robert Ferguson Crandall, died in combat in France.
Despite this loss, he remained a stalwart patriot and in 1918 published Liberty Illumined and Songs for the Boys in Khaki.
[4] In 1923, feeling despondent over increasingly ill health, he wrote a thank you note to his housekeeper and then committed suicide in his barn using a pistol.