Where is Lura Buried? Part 3

John CRAPSEY, Jr.

A very interesting stranger moved to town.

Thirty-six-year-old Reverend John CRAPSEY, Jr. was a widower¹ with a ten-year-old son, Angelo.² He was also described as crazy and a false prophet.³

John hailed from Western New York State,⁴ a region described by the evangelist Charles G. Finney as the "burned-over district," meaning it was so heavily evangelized, there was no fuel (unconverted souls) left over to "burn" (convert). It was a region where Protestant evangelists such as Finney achieved many converts to the Congregationalist, Methodist, and Baptist churches. However, there were a large number of uneducated people who were easily influenced by folk religion (Christianity impacted by superstition). Furthermore, there were a number of nonconformist movements founded by laypeople that caused much concern among the traditional church bodies. These included Mormonism, the Millerites, Spiritualism, the Shakers, and the Oneida Society.⁵

So when John started preaching hellfire and brimstone, with his congregation speaking in tongues, trembling, and seeing visions of graves opening from earthquakes, it was not surprising that a mob of 70 men confronted him with a warrant to leave Roulette and never return.⁶

Despite this, Lura married him on 18 January 1853.⁷ Was it a marriage of convenience, love, or a little of both?

Besides Lura's daughter, Viola, and John's son, Angelo, they added four more children to the family within the next ten years: Alice, William Merrick ("Willie"), Harriet (sometimes called "Suky,"⁸ but more often, "Hattie"), and George Bayard CRAPSEY.⁹

But religious fervor was not the only thing troubling the country. 

To be continued....

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1 Dennis W. Brandt, Pathway to Hell: A Tragedy of the American Civil War (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 33.^↩
2 Ibid., 30.^↩
3 Ibid., 25.^↩
4 Ibid., 31.^↩
5 Wikipedia contributors, "Burned-over district," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burned-over_district&oldid=635275417 (accessed January 12, 2015).^↩
6 Brandt, Pathway to Hell, 35, 36^↩
7 Ibid., 35.^↩
8 1870 U.S. census, Cottonwood County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Southwood, p. 6, dwelling 89, family 89, John Crapsey household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 January 2006); citing NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 187.^↩
9 Brandt, Pathway to Helll, 35.^↩