Claudius Crozet
Claude "Claudius" Crozet (born December 31, 1789 in Villefranche-sur-Saône , † January 29, 1864 in Chesterfield County , Virginia ) was a French civil engineer who worked in the United States.
Crozet lost his mother at an early age and moved to Paris with his father in 1800. He studied engineering at the École Polytechnique (from 1805) and at the artillery school in Metz until 1809. He took part as a lieutenant in Napoleon's Russian campaign, was promoted to captain and was captured by Russia at Borodino . In 1814 he was released. He was then back in Napoleon's army until his discharge in 1816. In the same year he married Agathe Decamp, with whom he had two daughters and a son, and emigrated to the USA, where he became a professor at West Point . He used a textbook from the École Polytechnique and wrote a book on descriptive geometry himself (1821). He later wrote school books on arithmetic (1848, 1857).
In 1823 he became chief engineer of the Virginia Board of Public Works in Richmond (Virginia) , where he was mainly concerned with the assessment of transport projects (roads, railways, canals). Crozet kept getting into arguments with officials - he had a difficult personality. In 1832 he therefore worked in Louisiana, where he was dealing with drainage problems for New Orleans, but returned in 1837 to his old post in Virginia. In 1843 he was dismissed after arousing the displeasure of the canal builders because he saw railways as a better alternative. He made a map of Virginia (1848) and wrote books on the design of roads, railroads and aqueducts.
He was one of the founders of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), which opened in 1839. He determined the curriculum and military training program and became a school board member for six years after its establishment.
His main work is the Blue Ridge Tunnel, one of four tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Charlottesville to Staunton (Virginia) for the Blue Ridge Railroad, of which he was chief engineer since 1849, and about 1,300 m long. It was completed in 1856, and the railway line (now Virginia Central Railroad and later part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company) opened two years later. The tunnel was started from two sides and deviated only 15 cm from the planned route (the replacement tunnel built in 1944, however, deviated 1.2 m). The old Blue Ridge Tunnel was later converted into a pedestrian tunnel, part of the rails to trail project. When it opened in 1858, he was already building an aqueduct to supply drinking water to Washington DC. In 1860 he became chief engineer of the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad. Work came to a standstill with the beginning of the civil war. He died in 1864 in his son-in-law's house.
Much of his estate is in the Library of Virginia. After being reburied in 1942, he lies in the VMI cemetery. In Virginia, the town of Crozet, Virginia in Albemarle County was named after him in 1870.
literature
- William Couper: Claudius Crozet: Soldier-Scholar-Educator-Engineer (1789–1864), Charlottesville: Historical Publishing Co. 1936
- Robert F. Hunter, Edwin L. Dooley: Claudius Crozet, French Engineer in America, 1790–1864, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989
- Mary E. Lyons: The Blue Ridge Tunnel, a remarkable engineering feat in antebellum Virginia, The History Press, Charleston 2014
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Crozet, Claudius |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Crozet, Claude |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French civil engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 31, 1789 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Villefranche-sur-Saône |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 29, 1864 |
| Place of death | Chesterfield County, Virginia |