Henry Royce Culpepper, Jr.

In 1962, my wife and I moved to Booneville, Mississippi, where I worked for Southbridge Plastics in Corinth, and she taught in the school of nursing in North East Mississippi Junior College. In 1965, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where I worked for the Baptist Sunday School Board and Becky was Executive Director of the Tennessee Nurses Association.

In 1969 we had another son, Bruce Davidson Culpepper, and in 1970 another son Mathew Wallace Culpepper. Bruce is for Becky's favorite aunt, Davidson is for my mother's maiden name, Mathew is for the first Culpepper we knew about at that time, Wallace is for Becky's father, Andrew Wallace Clark.

After working for the BSSB for 28 years, with three job changes, but many title changes, I retired in 1992. Since retirement, I have worked part time for a hardware store, a friend in the pool and spa business, but currently am just enjoying retirement and working on genealogy. I wrote over 100 articles for Vol II History of Chickasaw County, Mississippi which was published in 1997, and am currently updating most of these articles for the Pontotoc History Book which will be published late 1998 or 1999.

It was in Jackson that my first interest in genealogy was ignited. The lady I was rooming with was related to a friend from Okolona and she was a genealogist. She began bringing home census information about my family. I asked her what she charged, and she said she was just doing it to pass the time while waiting on the bus.

When I showed this to my parents, they began getting information about the family together. Soon after my mother developed breast cancer and died in 1975 at age 59. My father died in 1980 at age 67 of kidney infection as a result of Alzheimers. The genealogy interest stayed on the back burner until I retired in 1992. It was rekindled and I have been working very hard and diligently since.

If Lew (Griffin) is right, I can trace my Culpepper ancestry back to Henry Culpepper, immigrant. I can trace my Davidsons back to Joseph Davidson, immigrant to Pennsylvania and Iredell County, North Carolina. I can only trace my Hadleys back to Joshua Hadley and his two brothers from North Carolina, with no information as to parents of place. In 1994-95, I helped computerize the three volumes of Descendants of Simon Hadley, over 16,000 names. The Garrigu(e)s history can be traced back to La Garrigues in France in 1600s. My Foushee line can only be traced back five generations. However, a Foushee genealogist has compiled information on every spelling and line she can find which goes back into France. I just completed a three year project of computerizing her two books which contained over 38,000 names.

I am active in Mt Juliet First Baptist Church. I am also active in APICS, The Educational Organization for Resource Management, being a member for 30 years and on the local chapter board for 14 of the past 15 years and serving as President several years ago. I hold the CPIM (Certified Professional Inventory Manager) which is attained by passing a series of tests on various parts of production, warehousing, manufacturing, and distribution.