Four Johns vs. a Full House

A Review of the 17th Century John Culpepers
of Virginia and the Carolinas

By Bill Russell

Publisher's Note: With Bill Russell's permission, the following text has been lifted from an e-mail message of 21 Nov 1998 from Bill to the Culpepper E-mail discussion list on RootsWeb. We will update this section of the web as he releases future updates.

I'll try to outline what I am working on, the general information sources, and some tentative conclusions in a piecemeal fashion by posts. Later, when I have finished, I'll make available a paper by internet with proper citation with greater detail. I consider the citation of sources to be extremely important to this task, but because of the way that I am doing this, full citation will have to wait until I finish my paper. Frankly, doing this in my spare time by internet doesn't allow for the detail that a full paper will allow.

I have not answered some of the more detailed questions yet, particularly Warren's very good series, but will try to do so as I go along. Unfortunately, I will have to try this at my pace as I have a great deal of other business to attend to - earning a living being paramount. In terms of process, I also want to address these in an order that doesn't cause me to have to change the order in which I am putting together the paper, although I'll get to some of the shorter questions as time permits.

The first thing that I am trying to address is the question of which John Culpeper/Culpepper belongs to which specifically dated fact the we have or that I have subsequently found. Many of these are overlapping in time and geographic locations which has caused a great deal of confusion when dealing with several people of the same name. I am limiting the scope of this to John Culpepers who have been mentioned in some fashion with 17th Century Virginia and the Carolinas. Obviously, Barbados, England, and New England tie into this, but only so far as the references are to those that may be in Virginia or the Carolinas.

Publisher's Note: The John Culpepers of Barbados are separately covered on pages authored by me. Bill and I are working on resolving some minor differences in views about the Barbados Culpepers, and the Barbados pages temporarily reflect only my views. However, those pages were updated on 22 Nov 1998 to better embrace some insights that Bill has provided.

A variety of John Culpeper citations identify various individuals, who may be one and the same, with the following events and/or locations:

1. John Culpeper of Accomack County, Virginia in 1635-1645.
2. John Culpeper the Merchant baptized Harrietsham 1606 [son of John Culpeper of Astwood in Feckenham and Ursula Woodcock] who had business dealings with Virginia and New England during much of the middle years of the 17th Century.
3. John Culpeper b c. 1633 the son of Thomas and Katherine St. Leger Culpeper, nephew of John number 2 above, and brother of Alexander and Frances Culpeper. (In a 25 May 2000 e-mail to Lew Griffin, Bill added, " If [John, son of Thomas] came to Virginia with the rest of his family, he was only 18 when he left England. He could, of course, have had some training at law in Virginia by reading law - serving as an attorney's clerk while learning the law. He was at least literate enough to serve as clerk and sheriff. It is not clear one way or the other whether or not he was acting as an attorney - he may well have been.)
4. John Culpeper who was the sheriff and clerk of court in Accomack and Northampton Counties (the Eastern Shore) of Virginia c 1671-1675 and died there c. 1674.
5. John Culpeper of Albemarle b.c. 1644 who was the so-called "Carolina Rebel." 
6. John Culpeper of a variety of court actions in Albemarle, New England, and Virginia who may be a combination of all of the above.
7. A variety of John Culpeper references in land transactions involving headrights.
8. A John Culpeper who name appears as in a documents to divide parishes in Lancaster County, Virginia 14 September 1659.

It is my belief that all of the events and facts above, and others, fit four distinct individuals: John of Accomack (#1) of whom I will address part of this posting, John the Merchant (#2), John the son of Thomas and Katherine Culpeper (#3), and John of Albemarle (#4).

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Publisher's Note: The balance of Bill's initial post will be found on a separate page for John of Accomack. He has also subsequently offered his theories on John the Merchant.

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In an e-mail to Warren Culpepper and Lew Griffin dated 6 Jul 1999, Bill noted:

"I have a strong suspicion that John, the Carolina Rebel was the son of John [the Merchant, of Harrietsham] the uncle of Frances Culpeper  Berkeley, but that will take more time."