Pont Crowninshield, wife of Francis Boardman Crowninshield, is known as one of America's first major historical preservationists and was a founding member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Charles Francis Adams IV, great-great-great-grandson of Benjamin Williams Crowninshield and the son of Charles Francis Adams III, was the first president and later chairman of the Raytheon Company. Brahmin life Marriages The Crowninshields, like other Boston Brahmin families, often married into other noted families. Frances (Fanny) Cadwalader Crowninshield, daughter of George and Harriet Sears Crowninshield, married John Quincy Adams II, son of Charles Francis Adams, grandson of president John Quincy Adams and great grandson of president John Adams. William Crowninshield Endicott was a direct descendant of John Endecott, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fellow Salem resident Nathaniel Hawthorne's father, Captain Nathaniel Hathorne Sr., sailed ships owned by the Crowninshields, who were his in-laws. The Crowninshields were also intermarried with the Derby and Pickman families of Salem, two other dynastic families of merchants. George Crowninshield married Mary Derby, sister of Elias Hasket Derby, who married Elizabeth Crowninshield, George Crowninshield's sister, in 1761. Anstiss Derby, Elias Hasket's daughter by his Crowninshield wife, Derby married merchant Benjamin Pickman Jr. Rebecca Crowninshield Browne married Robert F. Bradford, who was Governor of Massachusetts from 1947 to 1949. Francis Boardman Crowninshield married the former Louise Evaline du Pont (later Louise E. du Pont Crowninshield) of the Du Pont family. First home On June 20, 1700, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dr. John Casper Richter von Crowninshield (Johannes Kaspar Richter von Kronenscheldt, as first spelled), became a historic landowner of an estate by Spring Pond in Lynn and Salem, married Elizabeth, daughter of the former land owners of the estate. He was a physician from Germany, descended from a noble family of the Kingdom of Saxony. He bought the land near Spring Pond with all the “houses, buildings, waters, and fishings” from Elizabeth (Clifford) Allen of Salem, widow of Jacob Allen. He settled on the land in the interest of retreat and farming. Friends and rivals The Crowninshields also had close associations with other elite families, including the Monroes, Jeffersons, and Madisons. Robert Gould Shaw was a close friend of Benjamin W. Crowninshield (not to be confused with Benjamin Williams Crowninshield) at Harvard. The Crowninshields also periodically lived with other noted figures, such as William Bentley, who boarded with the family in Salem from 1791 to