Adelaide T. Crapsey

Adelaide Trowbridge Crapsey (1855–1950) was an American philanthropist, social reformer, clergyman's wife, and businesswoman.

Jean Webster, the Vassar College roommate and lifelong friend of her daughter Adelaide, the poet, noted that "Dr. and Mrs. Crapsey weren't the ideal parents for a large family.

"[7] After their marriage, her husband continued his busy work as a priest, which allowed the couple only two or three nights a week for courting and having guests.

[8] In 1879, Mrs. Crapsey's husband accepted a call to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Rochester, NY, where he conducted his first service on June 1.

She and her three children stayed for a while with her Trowbridge family in Catskill, which lies between New York and Rochester when traveling by water.

Then she and her children traveled to Rochester by Hudson River steamer and Erie Canal boat and arrived on July 1.

[11] She helped her husband in working with boys who belonged to the mischievous gangs in the Averill Avenue district in which they lived.

Both Crapseys began and taught in a night school with classes in "domestic science and mechanical arts.

[15] When her husband received word that he was finally removed from office in November 1906, he went into St. Andrew's Church and walked up and down the aisle "mourning the death of his ministerial life", and she came over from the rectory and comforted him.

One of the workers describing the factory said that "the atmosphere was one of a joyful sewing bee with the gentle laughter, the soft creaking of the rocking chairs and the availability of refreshments."

[24] In addition to Rochester, the Company sold the children's dresses it produced "all over the United States and in many foreign countries.

Under "Infants’ and Children's Wear," was this paragraph:[26] In 1921, the State of New York Department of Labor and the national magazine Nation's Health commended the Adelaide T. Crapsey Company for designing two things in its factory to minimize worker fatigue caused by poor posture caused by poorly designed equipment.

[29] Both of Rochester's newspapers, the morning Democrat and Chronicle and the afternoon Times Union, carried a story with a photograph about Mrs. Crapsey's eightieth birthday on March 7, 1935.

[33] Mrs. Crapsey told the Democrat and Chronicle reporter "that her only claims to distinction are the facts that she never has had her picture in a newspaper and that she never has been in a bank.

[35] She told the Times Union reporter that "she was most deeply touched yesterday, she said, by the fact that persons of all religions remembered her.

"[36] On Armistice Day 1941, Mrs. Crapsey wrote a letter to the editor of the Courier-Gazette newspaper in Newark, New York, a town about thirty-five miles from Rochester.

The letter explained why she cared so much about soldiers: "A very young and beloved Uncle was in the Mexican War and killed in his first battle.

"[37] On March 7, 1948, the Rochester newspaper the Democrat and Chronicle reported that Mrs. Algernon S. Crapsey was ninety-three, that she had "recently recovered from a hip injury, and that she would "be at home to friends.

"[38] The front page of the second section of Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle for Monday, January 9, 1950, contained the following headline: The story went on to say that Mrs. Crapsey had died on January 8, 1950, and that her death, after having lived in Rochester for seventy years, marked the end of an era for the city.