Crager, Cuno Parker (1886–1945) and Reba Nettie (Hatton) (1888–1983)

Cuno P. Crager was a missionary educator and administrator who served in Africa and Latin America with his wife, Reba Hatton Crager.

Early Years

Cuno Parker Crager was born December 13, 1886, in New York City to George Charlton (1859-1920) and Mary Catherine Chesbro (1854-1887) Crager. During his boyhood Cuno lived for about two years among Sioux Indians in Nebraska and the Dakota Territory where his father served in the United States Army. He also traveled with his father during a 20-month deployment in Europe.¹

Cuno’s mother, Mary Crager, was a Seventh-day Adventist but died when he was nine months old. After coming into contact with his maternal grandmother, who was also Adventist, Cuno was baptized in 1898 by W. A. Westworth. At that point, as he later put it, he had “accepted the message” but was “converted” in 1903. He enrolled at South Lancaster Academy in Massachusetts in 1904, canvassed denominational literature in western New York during the summers to help pay his way, and graduated in 1907. Upon graduation he served as “tent master” for and evangelistic effort conducted by F. H. DeVinney in Schenectady, New York. He was called to serve as preceptor and teacher at Mount Vernon College in Ohio beginning in the fall of 1907 and remained in that position through December 1908.²

Reba Nettie Hatton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 1888, to William B. (1864-1907) and Olive B. (1865-1944) Hatton.³ She grew up in an Adventist home and was baptized in August 1905 by Charles Baerle.⁴ That year she enrolled at South Lancaster Academy, where she graduated three years later. On June 1, 1908, Cuno and Reba wedded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.⁵

South Africa

The Cragers left for mission service in South Africa in January 1909. Cuno served for six and a half years as principal of Claremont Union College (later Helderberg College). The “hard, wearing labour” included a full teaching load in addition to “the business management of the school.” He did “nearly the work of two men,” wrote W. B. White, president of the South African Union.⁶ A farewell tribute in the South African Missionary stated that although Professor Crager was “but a boy in years, and with difficulties to meet which might well daunt a man of ripe experience, he took hold of the task with a stout heart and an earnest purpose to do his best to make the work of Claremont Union College School the great lever that it should be in preparing labourers to sound the warning message to Africa’s millions.”⁷

Due to a breakdown in health,⁸ Cuno and Reba returned to America in 1915 along with the three children born to them in South Africa: Winifred Eleanor (1909-1974), Jean Hatton (1912-1957), and Cuno Parker, Jr. (1914-1915). Sadly, Cuno, Jr. died in infancy, not long after their return, on November 10, 1915.⁹

Latin America

Crager served as preceptor at Washington Missionary College in Takoma Park, Maryland, during the 1915-1916 academic year while taking courses to complete a bachelor’s degree. After graduating in 1916, Crager was issued a ministerial license from the General Conference¹⁰ and called back to the overseas mission field as secretary of the Educational, Missionary Volunteer (youth), and Sabbath School departments of the Austral Union Conference (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile) in South America. He was ordained in 1919 in Buenos Aires by O. Montgomery, J. L. Shaw, Charles Thompson, and W. E. Howell.¹¹

Also in 1919, Reba gave birth to another daughter, Lorraine Olive, and the family moved to Santiago, Chile, where Cuno took up new responsibilities as president of the Chile Conference. In 1922 the family moved back to Buenos Aires, headquarters of the newly organized South American Division, where Crager’s assignment, once again, was to lead the Educational, M.V., and Sabbath School departments.¹² On furlough in 1925, the Cragers spent the summer with family and promoting Adventist mission in the Philadelphia area.¹³

Accepting reassignment to the United States in late 1929, Crager served as Educational Department secretary of the Lake Union Conference for the first five months of 1930. Then, at the General Conference session that year, he was elected associate secretary of the Educational Department of the General Conference.¹⁴

After five years at General Conference headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Cragers returned to service in Latin America, this time locating in San Jose, Costa Rica, where Cuno served as superintendent of the Central American Union Mission from 1935 to 1940. He then became superintendent of the Columbia-Venezuela Union Mission in the fall of 1940 but after less than a year returned to America for the General Conference session of 1941, anticipating permanent transfer to the homeland. But, in response to changing circumstances, Crager accepted a special assignment in 1942 to supervise construction of buildings for the new Colegio Vocacional y Profesional in Montemorelos, Mexico (later Montemorelos University).¹⁵

Final Years

Having held administrative responsibility for education throughout much of his career, Crager returned to the classroom in September 1943 as Bible teacher at the Colegio Adventista de las Antillas in Cuba. A year and a half later he was called to serve as superintendent of the Puerto Rico Mission.¹⁶

Just a few weeks after beginning work in Puerto Rico, Crager contracted an illness that led to his death in San Juan on May 9, 1945, at age 58.¹⁷ He is buried in the Cementerio Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis.¹⁸

In addition to raising their children and sharing with her husband in the joys and burdens of gospel work, Reba Hatton Crager served as a teacher and educational supervisor both during their years in foreign mission service and in the United States. She died in Orlando, Florida, on May 10, 1983, at the age of 94.¹⁹

Sources

Crager, Cuno Parker and Reba Hatton. Secretariat Missionary Files, RG 21, Record 114887. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Archives, Silver Spring, MD (GCA).

Crager Family Tree. Ancestry.com. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/174939640/person/282272331676/facts.

“Cuno P. Crager,” Find A Grave. Memorial ID 99123999, October 18, 2012. Accessed January 18, 2023. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99123999/cuno-p.-crager.

“Cuno Parker Crager obituary.” ARH, June 21, 1945.

General Conference Committee Minutes. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Online Archives (GCA). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Minutes/Forms/AllFolders.aspx.

“Reba Hatton Crager obituary.” ARH, August 4, 1983.

“Rev. Cuno P. Crager Dies; Was Serving in Puerto Rico.” Washington Evening Star, May 10, 1945.

Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia. 2^nd rev. edition. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1996. S.v. “Crager, Cuno Parker.”

“While not unexpected to most . . . .” South African Missionary, May 10, 1915.

White, W. B. “Union Conference Changes.” South African Missionary, April 5, 1915.

Notes

1. Cuno Parker Crager Biographical Information Blanks, January 29, 1917, April 2, 1934, November 18, 1940, and December 7, 1941, Secretariat Missionary Files, RG 21, Record 114887, GCA; “George Carlton Crager,” Find A Grave, Memorial ID 92571717, June 25, 2012, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/92571717/george-carlton-crager.↩

2. Cuno Parker Crager Biographical information Blanks, GCA; “Cuno Parker Crager obituary,” ARH, June 21, 1945, 20.↩

3. Reba Hatton Crager Biographical Information Blank, [December 7, 1941], GCA.↩

4. Reba Hatton Crager Biographical Information Blank, February 1, 1917, GCA.↩

5. Cuno Parker and Reba Hatton Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

6. W.B. White, “Union Conference Changes,” South African Missionary, April 5, 1915, 2.↩

7. “While not unexpected to most . . . ,” South African Missionary, May 10, 1915, 12.↩

8. “Union Conference Resolutions,” South African Missionary, May 24, 1915, 2.↩

9. See Crager Family Tree, Ancestry.com, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/174939640/person/282272331676/facts.↩

10. General Conference Committee Minutes, August 4, 1916, 452, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Minutes/GCC/GCC1916.pdf.↩

11. Cuno Parker Crager Biographical information Blanks, GCA.↩

12. “Cuno Parker Crager obituary.”↩

13. “East Pennsylvania News Notes,” Columbia Union Visitor, July 23, 1925, 5.↩

14. Cuno Parker Crager Biographical information Blanks, GCA.↩

15. Ibid; “Cuno Parker Crager obituary.”↩

16. “Cuno Parker Crager obituary.”↩

17. Ibid.↩

18. “Cuno P. Crager,” Find A Grave, Memorial ID 99123999, October 18, 2012, accessed January 18, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99123999/cuno-p.-crager.↩

19. “Reba Hatton Crager obituary,” ARH, August 4, 1983, 23.↩