Came to Jamestown in the Second Supply the latter part of Sept. 1608. He was probably a member of the family of Crashaw of Crashaw, Lancashire, in which the name Richard was common and which had branches at Bentye and Dodsworth in Yorkshire. If such be the case, he was a relative of the Rev. William Crashaw, B.D. (1572-1626), who was born near Sheffield, Yorkshire, and whose eloquent sermon on the colonization of Virginia has been so often quoted, and of the latter’s son Richard Crashaw (1013-1649) the Roman Catholic priest and mystic poet.
Capt. Croshaw was the author of one of the complimentary verses prefixed to Capt. John Smith’s General History, 1624, and the latter seems to have had a high opinion of his knowledge of Indians and Indian warfare. When the massacre of 1622 occurred, Croshaw was on a trading cruise on the Potomac and at once challenged Opechancanough or an of his men to fight him naked but the offer was not accepted. He was a member of the London Company, 1609, and is listed as an adventurer in the Virginia Company, 1618, 1620.
A patent issued, probably in 1623, to Captain Rawleigh Crawshaw, Gent., of Kiccoughtan, an Ancient Planter who hath remained in this country 15 years complete and performed many worthy services to the Colony, for 500 acres near Old Point Comfort, due for his personal adventure and transportation out of England of his servant and his wife, who came in the Bona Nova in 1620 and l25 adventured. He was a Burgess for Elizabeth City in the Assembly of 1624. On 16 March 1623/24 a commission issued to Capt. Rawleigh Croshawe to trade with the savages for corn. On this trading voyage in the pinnace Elizabeth he bought a great Canoe with 10,000 of Mr. Treasurer’s bluew beades.