{"value"=>"<p>Stephen Crowell and Lucy Ross were George Willis' maternal great-grandparents. Their daughter, Clara Rockwell Ingraham, married George Ingraham, George's grandfather. Stephen Crowell (1810-1889) was born in Connecticut (different accounts offer Mansfield or Hartford as a birthplace). He worked as a painter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, served as Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Kings County and then worked as an insurance agent in New York for the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company of Newark. After a catastrophic Brooklyn fire in September 1848, Crowell established the Phenix Insurance Company of Brooklyn in 1853. He served as president from that date to 1888, and was the first insurance company to pay out losses after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Boston fire of 1872. Upon retirement, he was elected chair of Phenix's board of directors.</p> <p>These folders contain numerous reports, obituaries and tributes from different New York-area newspapers. The majority of the remaining documents are genealogical in nature: a handwritten Crowell genealogy, exchanges with journalists, relatives and genealogists, and a memo book containing notes from interviews conducted with Crowell.</p> <p>The correspondence contains fascinating letters between Willis and employees of the Continental Corporation, the successor organization to Phenix.</p>"}