Saturday, December 10, 2011

Joe Crapyou, quarryman

The cross-shaped marker at the grave of Joe Crapyou (b. 1865, d. 1948) is simple, classic, and (to my eye) quite beautiful.


1865
JOE CRAPYOU
1948

Joe Crapyou, born in Italy, worked at the Marble Cliff Quarry in Columbus, Ohio. The quarry was once the largest limestone quarry in the United States.

Several years ago, the weekly newspaper Grandview ThisWeek featured the Marble Cliff Quarry in its “Moments in Time” column:

An article in the October 2, 1880 Columbus Dispatch documented a reporter’s visit to the quarry, where he witnessed a planned explosion that displaced an estimated 700 tons of rock. “The Marble Cliff quarry [owned by J. E. Price] is working 29 men at present, and as an inducement for more men to come here, Mr. Price has raised the wages to $1.50 per day and offers house rent free.” He went on to say that eighty railroad cars per week were loaded at the quarry, and in 23 years, seven acres of stone had been removed, and ninety acres remained... Most of the workers in the local quarries were Italian immigrants and lived in the “Italian Settlement” at Glenn and Fifth in Grandview.

According to his death certificate, Joe (Joseph) Crapyou lived at 1397 West Fifth Avenue in Grandview at the time of this death, about half a mile from the intersection listed above as the site of the Italian Settlement.

From FamilySearch.org

In the map below, B marks the Joe Crapyou home; A marks the intersection of Glenn and Fifth Avenues. The old quarry site is to the left, now mostly residential, the quarry pits converted to lakes.


Click to enlarge


Union Cemetery, Franklin County, Ohio

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful stone. Great writeup too. I would never have imagined that Crapyou was an Italian name. It's a very unusual name. Perhaps he was born in Italy but his family was from somewhere else?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I saw one Ancestry tree that listed his father's name as Crapio, though I haven't double-checked. Crapio -> Crapyou isn't very far-fetched, but not sure that Crapio has an Italian origin either.

    ReplyDelete

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