Caroline Bartlett Crane was born on August 17, 1858 in Hudson, Wisconsin, to Lorenzo and Julia Brown Bartlett. Her father was a riverboat captain on the Mississippi River, and at a young age Caroline learned to navigate. She graduated from Carthage College, Carthage, Illinois, in 1879. After graduation, Caroline worked for one year as a school principal in Montrose, Iowa. She then worked for several newspapers over a number of years as a reporter. She worked for the Chicago Telegraph, the Minneapolis Tribune, and the Oshkosh Morning Times. In 1885, she scored an interview with Mark Twain. In 1886 she finally wrote her father of her determination to become a liberal minister.This was a dream she had since she was a child, and one that her father did not initially support. Her father finally gave approval, and Caroline was accepted by the Iowa Sate Unitarian Conference as a ministry candidate. In 1887, she became a minister for the All Soul's Unitarian Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 1889, Caroline became the minister for the First Unitarian Church of Kalamazoo. During Caroline's tenure, the church began the first free public kindergarten, a school of manual training and domestic science, a gymnasium for women, a day nursery, a cafeteria, and the Frederick Douglass Club. On December 16, 1894, the People's Church of Kalamazoo was dedicated.

On December 31, 1896, Caroline married Dr. Augustus Warren Crane; she was 38, Augustus was 10 years her junior. Caroline continued as the minister for the People's Church until 1898. After this, she spent the rest of her life focused on municipal reforms, meat, prison and almshouse reforms, sanitary surveys, and clean streets. She was involved in the suffrage movement, and was president of the Michigan Women's Committee of National Defense during WWI. Caroline also organized the Kalamazoo Women's Civic Improvement League to promote public health. In 1914 the Cranes adopted two infants (who were born in 1913), a son they named Warren Bartlett and a daughter they named Juliana. Caroline died on March, 24, 1935, from injuries resulting from a fall in her home on Hillcrest Avenue; she was 76 years old. Caroline is buried in Mountain Home Cemetery in Kalamazoo. In 1985 she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

Augustus Warren Crane was born on November 15, 1868, in Adrian, Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1894. He came to Kalamazoo that same year and founded a small medical practice that would become the oldest clinical radiology practice in the United States. Augustus was an internationally-acknowledged pioneer in radiology, and received a Gold Medal from the Radiological Society of North America in 1921. He was a member of the London Roentgen Society, and president of the American Roentgen Society in 1916. Augustus was the first consulting bacteriologist for the City of Kalamazoo in 1895. Augustus was the first to suggest cancer could be treated by radiology, and made the first X-rays of the colon. Augustus died on February 23, 1937. He was cremated and is interred at White Chapel Crematorium.