[3] His father was one of a trio to form an abolition party in Homer, where the family had settled in 1830, at Route 281 and Cold Brook Road, the Cravath dwelling is now noted as the Salisbury-Pratt Homestead, a way station along the Underground Railroad to Canada.

The daughter of his brother, Bishop, Dr. May Hannah Cravath Wharton (1873–1959), left a noted autobiography, Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands, an account of her years as a physician in rural Tennessee.

After devoting much of his adult life to religion and education, in 1886, Cravath earned a Doctor of Divinity degree at Grinnell College.

He entered the Union Army in December 1863, serving until the end of the war, including campaigns in Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee.

He purchased land for the Fisk School, which he cofounded in 1866 with John Ogden, superintendent of education for the Freedmen's Bureau in Tennessee; and the Reverend Edward Parmelee Smith, also of the AMA.

[10] Using Fisk as his base, Cravath also started freedmen's schools at Macon, Milledgeville and Atlanta, Georgia; and at various points in Tennessee.