Charles Nelson Crittenton (February 20, 1833 – November 16, 1909) was a manufacturer and distributor of drugs and patent medicines, a Protestant evangelist, and a philanthropist, best known for his founding with physician Katherine Waller Barrett of the National Florence Crittenton Mission.

Charles Nelson Crittenton was born on February 20, 1833, on a farm in Henderson in Jefferson County, New York.

[1][3] After the death of his daughter in 1882, Crittenton turned to the church and became associated with the Bleecker Street Night Mission.

[1] In 1898, the National Florence Crittenton Mission received a federal charter to carry on this work.

[1] Of these mission homes more than 70 were organized in Crittenton's lifetime in all the larger cities of the United States and in Japan, China and Mexico.

For the next 16 years, Crittenton traveled across the country as an evangelist, working and living in his "Gospel Car".