Representative John Culpepper

John Culpepper (c. 1761 – January 1841) was an American clergyman and politician who served multiple terms as a Federalist and Adams Party Congressional Representative from North Carolina during the early national and antebellum periods. He was born about 1761 near Wadesboro, in Anson County in the Province of North Carolina, the son of Sampson Culpepper (born 1737 in Bertie County, Province of North Carolina; died 1820 in Wilkinson County, Georgia) and Eleanor Gilbert (born April 25, 1745, in Norfolk County, Virginia Colony; died July 19, 1823, in Wilkinson County, Georgia). Through his father’s line he was related to John Culpeper of Albemarle, the leader of Culpeper’s Rebellion in 1677, who was his third great uncle, linking him to an earlier tradition of colonial political dissent.

Culpepper attended the public schools of his native region and pursued a religious vocation at an early age. He became a Baptist minister and for approximately fifty years pastored the Rocky River Baptist Church, a prominent congregation in the area that later lay within Montgomery County, North Carolina. During the American Revolution, the Third North Carolina General Assembly created Montgomery County in 1779 from a portion of Anson County, and over the ensuing decades Culpepper’s ministerial and civic influence extended across both counties. As population shifted and the federal census was conducted each decade beginning in 1790, congressional district boundaries in North Carolina were periodically redefined, and Culpepper would later represent districts that included territory from both Anson and Montgomery Counties.

Alongside his long pastoral career, Culpepper emerged as a significant political figure in the early Republic. He first entered national politics as a Federalist and presented his credentials as a Member-elect to the Tenth Congress, representing a North Carolina district that encompassed parts of the region in which he had lived and preached. He served from March 4, 1807, until January 2, 1808, when his seat was declared vacant by the House of Representatives as the result of a contested election based on alleged irregularities. Subsequently, he was reelected in the special election called to fill the vacancy and returned to serve from February 23, 1808, to March 3, 1809. Contemporary observers described him as a man of sound sense rather than brilliance, “useful rather than showy,” and he was regarded as a steady, practical legislator.

Culpepper’s most sustained period of congressional service began several years later. He was elected as a Federalist to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1813, to March 3, 1817, during the War of 1812 and the immediate postwar years. After an unsuccessful campaign for reelection in 1816 to the Fifteenth Congress, he returned to the House as a Federalist in the Sixteenth Congress, serving from March 4, 1819, to March 3, 1821. Again defeated for reelection in 1820 to the Seventeenth Congress, he nonetheless remained a figure of standing within North Carolina’s evolving party alignments. As the old Federalist Party declined and new coalitions formed around national leaders, Culpepper aligned himself with the faction supporting John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay.

Reflecting these shifting allegiances, Culpepper was elected as an Adams-Clay Federalist to the Eighteenth Congress and served from March 4, 1823, to March 3, 1825. He then ran unsuccessfully in 1824 for a seat in the Nineteenth Congress. He returned once more to the House as a member of the Adams Party in the Twentieth Congress, serving from March 4, 1827, to March 3, 1829. Over the course of these six terms in Congress—spanning the Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twentieth Congresses—Culpepper participated in the legislative process during a formative era in American political development, representing the interests of his North Carolina constituents as the nation confronted issues of war and peace, economic policy, and the reconfiguration of political parties. After declining to be a candidate for reelection in 1828, he retired from public life and returned to his ministerial and local pursuits.

In his personal life, Culpepper married and had children, and his descendants continued both his religious and public-service traditions. Among his children was John Alexander Culpeper, born December 9, 1800, in Anson County, North Carolina, who later became a pastor. John Alexander first married a woman recorded as “Let.” (likely Leticia) Russell, and later married Catherine Pinkney (born December 8, 1807, in North Carolina; died December 11, 1883, at Society Hill, Darlington County, South Carolina). Their children included Dr. James Furman Culpeper, born July 11, 1834, in Anson County, who served as captain of Culpepper’s South Carolina Battery (South Carolina 3rd Palmetto Battalion, Light Artillery, Company C) during the Civil War and subsequently practiced medicine for fifty years; A. Fuller Culpeper, born June 28, 1843, in Darlington County, North Carolina, who through battlefield promotions rose to the rank of lieutenant in his elder brother’s light artillery battery and died around 1900 in Dade County, Florida; and Charles M. Culpeper, born May 23, 1845, in Darlington County, who died on May 9, 1860, at age fourteen. Another of John Culpepper’s sons, Evan Alexander Culpepper Sr., was born March 17, 1808, in Anson County and later settled in Coryell County, Texas, where he died on June 10, 1884, leaving descendants.

In his later years, Culpepper left North Carolina and resided with family in South Carolina. He died in January 1841 at the residence of his son in Darlington County, South Carolina. He was interred in the cemetery at Society Hill, South Carolina, closing a life that combined half a century of Baptist ministry with a notable record of service in the United States House of Representatives as a Federalist, Adams-Clay Federalist, and Adams Party representative from North Carolina.