Carl F. Crecelius was born in Leavenworth, Crawford County, Indiana, on March 25, 1877. His parents were Clark F. and Kate (Wilbur) Crecelius, both natives of Crawford County. His father was a merchant who had served with General William T. Sherman in the Union army and who, after the war, became active in county and state politics, including two terms in the Indiana legislature.
Crecelius graduated from the Ohio Dental College in Cincinnati in 1900 and set up a successful practice in Falmouth, Kentucky. A lifelong Democrat, he was elected to the Kentucky legislature in 1907 and was reelected in 1909. In 1911, he was elected Secretary of State and served during the second administration of Governor James B. McCreary (1912-16). He served as a first lieutenant during World War I as head of a dental infirmary at Fort Logan in Texas.
He married Emma Perkhiser by whom he had a son, Carl, who was born in 1894. Following Emma’s death, he married Margaret Gulick on June 26, 1901; they had a daughter, Virginia. Margaret died in 1948.
Carl F. Crecelius died on March 28, 1970, at Booth Hospital in Covington, Kentucky. He was survived by his two children and a sister.
References
“Edelen, McAfee, Gulick and Associated Families”—Ancestry Plus;
Kentucky Death Records for 1911 to 2000;
Obituary, "Covington Post-Times," March 30, 1970;
Social Security Death Index;
George Lee Willis, Jr., "Kentucky Democracy: A History of the Party and Its Representative Members—Past and Present, Vol. II," (Louisville, 1935), pgs. 303-5.