One of the February prompts for 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks was "Earning A Living."
William McDill Crutcher is my 3rd Great Grandfather on my paternal side. William Crutcher spent the later part of his life being a stone cutter this included gravestones. William McDill Crutcher was born to William and Rebecca Crutcher in January 1856. He married Eva Shimp in January 1877, and they had 3 children including my second Great Grandfather Charles William Crutcher, oldest son of Eva and William. William would go on to marry Henerietta Friend after the death of Eva. They would have 9 children together. William would die suddenly in 1916.
Below is an excerpt from some reembraces of his father, William Crutcher by James Crutcher, youngest child of William and Henrietta Crutcher.
My father was one of those old-fashioned marble cutters who would go about the countryside in his surrey carving dates on tombstones in country church yards He was an excellent artisan, and regularly cut from granite and marble exquisitely detailed and beautiful images of angels and wreaths and open books and harps.
He was widely known about Lancaster, Ohio and its rural environs. He was called upon many times to carve the cornerstones of churches and buildings. With his mallet and chisels he would cut the date of construction and the name of the building into hard stone, sometimes in raised lettering, for which he would charge a higher fee. His regular job was with a small firm called the Danison Monumental Works, that dealt in monuments and gravestones. He worked there for 18 years.
After he died, when my mother and I would visit Forest Rose Cemetery and stand over his grave, I sometimes would ask her why he didn't have a large monument placed there. Mother would usually ignore the question and speak of something else. I didn't realize, of course, that it was a question of money which prevented it.
One day, however, she answered my question, and I was never perturbed about it again. She said, " no one could carve one as good as he could, besides he has a great many monuments. All the monuments you see around you are his. The whole cemetery is his monument."
Mother didn't permit me to forget my father. She always told me to remember that he was a good man.
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