General Notes

John Culpeper, born in 1606, could be the ancestor of mos
t American
Culpeppers. And yet little is known about him for certain
. Other
than this John, and his brother Thomas, there are no know
n Culpepers
with ties to Virginia, old enough to have been the father o
f the first
Henry Culpeper of early Lower Norfolk County, VA. From th
e research
of Fairfax Harrison (see below), we know that although Joh
n was
trained as a lawyer, he took up the career of a merchant in
stead, and
that he was involved in trade between England and the Ameri
can
colonies. And so hereafter, I'll refer to him as John Culpe
per the
Merchant.
John the Merchant may have been the John Culpeper who serve
d for a
time as the sheriff of Northampton County, VA, and who die
d there in
1674. It at least seems likely that he was the John who app
ears in
records in Isle of Wight and Northampton Counties beginnin
g in the
1640's. So it might be logical to assume that he was the Jo
hn
Culpeper in records there in the 1670's as well.
Some, however, think that John the Merchant (born 1606) wou
ld
have been too old to have served as Clerk of Court, and She
riff of
Northampton County in the early 1670's. By that time he wou
ld have
been in his mid-60's. These researchers think it more likel
y that
these later Northampton records refer to John Culpeper, bor
n 1633, son
of John Culpeper and Katherine St. Leger, who would have be
en almost
40 years old in the early 1670's. This John (born 1633), i
s also
thought to have lived in Virginia. Like John the Merchant
, few
surviving records document his life.
There is no record that John, the sheriff of Northampton, l
eft
any descendants, as none are mentioned in his 1674 estate
. Also, his
one known land grant escheated (was returned by default) t
o the state
of Virginia some 20 years after his death.
Those who think that John the Merchant was the one who die
d in
1674 offer various logical reasons why his land might hav
e escheated
back to Virginia, even though they think he did indeed leav
e
descendants.
Others suggest that the 1674 estate was that of John, son o
f
Thomas and Katherine, and that John the Merchant died somew
here else,
perhaps even in Barbados or in England. Further research i
s needed to
clarify these issues. It should be noted that early record
s in many
southern Virginia counties have been lost. Had these record
s
survived, they might have greatly expanded our knowledge o
f the
various early John Culpepers in Virginia.
In addition to John Culpeper the Merchant, and John Culpepe
r the son
of Thomas and Katherine, there was also a third contemporan
eous John,
John Culpeper "the Rebel" of Albemarle, NC, probably born i
n the
1640's. This third John, of Albemarle, also seems to have b
een a
merchant, and may possibly have been the son of John the Me
rchant.
It is difficult to sort out which of the various survivin
g records in
early NC, Virginia, and New England, might pertain to eac
h of these
Johns, and no attempt will be made to do so, at this time
, in this
article.
Merchants in colonial America left few records which have s
urvived
until today, and our knowledge of John Culpeper the Merchan
t suffers
as a result. But from what little we do know, it seems poss
ible that
John the Merchant and his sons may have worked as a agents
, or
"factors" in colonial trade. The following description of t
his sort
of work is excerpted from Perry of London by Jacob M. Price
, page 30:
"There were hardly any towns in the seventeenth century Che
sapeake
except the capitals' of Jamestown and St. Mary's City, an
d they were
places of little commercial importance. Early trading ventu
res to the
Chesapeake had often been entrusted to captains and superca
rgoes who
could travel about and seek out business where settlers wer
e to be
found. The practice, however