About Culpepper Connections!
Celebrating our 10th Anniversary on April 19, 2008

By Warren Culpepper

Our Purposes for the Site

1. Share and facilitate genealogical research on the Culpepper family, helping as many present-day Culpepper descendants as possible easily find their ancestry.
2. Help modern day Culpepper cousins to get to know one another.
3. Recognize and honor interesting and notable Culpeppers.
4. Have fun.

How it Got Started

Since 1976, Lew Griffin (pictured at right and great-grandson of Clarissa E. Culpepper) has made Genealogy a serious hobby. In the process, he's identified over 14,000 descendants of his ancestors, John and Nancy Gillespie Culpepper.

In late 1997, another Culpepper researcher, Atlanta attorney Fred Gleaton, contacted me when he realized that I was the President of the company which held the culpepper.com domain name. He wanted to know whether I had any interest in genealogy.

I explained that for some time I had wanted to learn more about my ancestors, but I had never done much about it other than to file away an extensive amount of research on the Boykin family given to me by my favorite great aunt.

I told Fred what I knew about my Culpepper ancestors, and he put me in touch with Lew who quickly told me where I fit in. I was amazed by the depth and breadth of information that Lew seemed to have, and my interest in further pursuing my roots was launched.

Over the next four months, Lew and I had an on-going exchange of e-mails in which we discovered that we each had something that would be of value to the other.

I had become quite interested in creating a Culpepper web site, and while I had an existing web site for my business and could easily add a separate genealogy website on our web server, I knew it would take years to gather enough data to make it worth while. And besides, I couldn't imagine living long enough to ever gather the amount of Culpepper information that Lew had so painstakingly accumulated.

Lew, on the other hand, had an enormous amount of data, but was so involved with gathering more, organizing what he had, and answering the questions of countless other Culpepper researchers, (not to mention trying to pursue his non-Culpepper lines) he had little time to launch and maintain a site, even though he had been quite interested in doing so for some time.

It didn't take long for each of us to realize that working together was the solution, and on April 19, 1998 Culpepper Connections! went live.

In October 1998, we had the opportunity to meet face to face for the first time. To memorialize the occasion, the photo (Lew on the left, Warren on the right) was taken in the Arizona desert, not far from where Lew and his wife, Cathy, live in Phoenix.

Warren Culpepper, pictured at left in August 2007 with his Golden Retrievers, Rusty (10 weeks) and Peggy

Who Maintains

When launched, Lew provided all of the initial genealogical databases as well as a large amount of the supplemental (historical and  archival) data. I built the initial web site, assisted by my son, Leigh, who in 1998 was in charge of systems for my company Culpepper and Associates. Leigh is now the company's President/CEO, and I am retired, but still serve as Chairman of the Board.

Since the initial launch, the on-going genealogical research has become a collaborative effort. Both Lew and I make periodic visits to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City to further our research, and I have also made numerous research trips around the southeastern US and to England. Our research efforts have been considerably aided by the information contributed by numerous other researchers and family members.

If you're interested in further details, see: