Finding Peter Crippen’s People

Back in January, we made a new connection with the Huntington African American Museum in New York. Executive Director & Chief Curator Tiarra Brown reached out to the Library of Virginia hoping to learn more about the man who is the focus of their newest exhibit: Peter Crippen. Crippen was born enslaved in Accomack County and liberated in 1818. After he was emancipated, Crippen moved and eventually settled in Huntington, New York. Crippen purchased land, made connections in the community, raised a family, and founded a church. Crippen’s seventeenth century home (which he purchased in 1864) was nearly demolished in 2020 but has since been dismantled and will be reconstructed as a part of the Huntington African American Museum.

Brown was interested in several records documenting Peter’s life in Virginia, two of which are in Virginia Untold. Recognizing the surname, I knew there were more Crippens, and thus, more to this story. I encourage you to read more about Peter Crippen’s life in New York which has been documented through archaeology, oral history, and documentary research. Follow the work of HAAM and check out their exhibition if you are in New York! In this space, however, I want to focus on Peter Crippen’s life before he migrated north and those who remained after his journey.

Leaving the state of Virginia in the early nineteenth century had large repercussions for Black people. It wouldn’t be until 1848 (over twelve years after Crippen left) that the General Assembly would pass a law making it illegal for free Black men and women to travel to a non-slave holding state and return to the Commonwealth.¹ Even so, in the wake of Nat Turner’s revolt in August 1831, Virginia issued new laws targeting Black people. Remaining in Virginia meant enduring and navigating policing and oppression but travel outside of Virginia’s borders was also risky move. In the wake of this enforcement, Crippen may have been motivated to start fresh outside of Virginia, but it didn’t come without sacrifice. Who did he leave behind? Did he plan to return one day? And what can we learn from the records digitized in Virginia Untold about those living in Accomack County before and after Peter lived there?

Huntington town historian Robert C. Hughes suggests that Crippen’s parents were supposed to be freed in 1782 by Thomas Crippen, a Quaker, living in Accomack County. However, some legal obstacle prevented Peter’s parents from taking full advantage of their freedom and they continued to be enslaved until Thomas’s daughter Sarah “Sally” Crippen freed Peter Crippen, his family, and several other individuals in 1818.²

In the Accomack County “Register of Free Negroes,” Peter Crippen was recorded as a free person of color born about the year 1807. The entry notes he was emancipated by deed from Sarah Crippen, confirming that he was likely the same individual listed in the 1818 deed of emancipation. Furthermore, his birth date in the register aligns with his age from the 1818 document. The entry provides a physical description: Five feet and six and a half inches tall, “Black,” with “a scar on the left arm above the elbow.” The entry provides few other details to illustrate his young life.

The Accomack County free register is different from register books from other localities in that the clerk recorded a date of birth but not a registration date. While we know when Peter was born, we have no way to determine his age at time of registration. Luckily, researchers have an additional resource: county court minute books and order books. By accessing the Accomack County minute books, I discovered that Peter Crippen was registered as a free person on June 1, 1831. I used other registration papers in Virginia Untold, taking note of registration numbers and tracking the order in which they appeared to narrow my date range to search in the minute books. I noted that a young man named Branson Crippen registered with the local court in 1825, about four years after being freed. He was twenty-five years old. I have seen patterns of free people registering as they “came of age.” There are conflicting birth dates for Peter, but if the registration entry was correct, Peter was also about twenty-four or twenty-five years old when he registered with the court.

Five years later Crippen was in New York. According to archaeologist and researcher Allison McGovern, Gilbert Crossman, owner of Crossman brickyards in Lloyd Harbor, New York sent word to Accomack County, Virginia for workers in his New York operation. For reasons we might never know for sure, Peter Crippen answered the call. In April 1836, Peter’s name shows up in Crossman’s account books—interestingly recorded as “Peter Cropper” which is another surname one finds in Accomack County antebellum records. Someone wrote above this name in a different hand: “Peter Crippin.”³

Free lists, poll books, commonwealth causes, and the Accomack County “Register of Free Negroes” circa 1806-1863 help us learn more about the county’s free Black population in the early nineteenth century. From the register, I learned that every single person who received their freedom in Sarah “Sally” Crippen’s 1818 deed, registered as free people in Accomack—all in different years, possibly based on their coming of age. Additionally, I counted sixteen free people registered in the Accomack County with the surname “Crippen” or “Crippin.” This includes individuals not documented in the 1818 deed like Edmund (b. 1826), and David (b. 1829) born years later but still carrying this familiar name. I suspect that Edmund and David were brothers given their side-by-side entries in the register.

While Peter Crippen moved to New York many stayed behind. One of those people was a man named Branson Crippen (also spelled Crippin). He was registered as a free person at the same time as an older Peter (b. 1768) emancipated via the 1818 deed. Branson Crippin was recorded in an 1851 “free list” in the Accomack Parish as a 56-year-old farmer.  A younger Branson Crippen, potentially his son, aged 23, is listed several lines down. In this 1851 record alone there were nearly 65 men and women recorded with the surname “Crippen” or “Cropper”—which I’ve assumed to be a variation of the same root surname.⁴ Forty-five-year-old Comfort Crippen is also recorded in this free list—perhaps the same twenty-year-old woman emancipated by Sarah Crippen. Ten years later in 1861, there was only one Branson Crippen recorded, age 50. Could this be the younger Branson Crippen? Ages and birth dates can often be wrong by several years in census records. Add this to the confusing pattern of repeating first names in Accomack County and the research becomes particularly challenging.

In 1850, “Branchen” Crippen was indicted for two crimes: remaining in the Commonwealth since being emancipated and possessing a firearm.⁵ I assumed this man to be Branson Crippen emancipated in 1818. Technically anybody emancipated by Sarah’s 1818 deed who remained in Virginia beyond a year of their emancipation date was breaking the law. However, there’s little indication that anyone from that deed submitted permission to remain in the state. Yet local officials chose to bring charges specifically against Branson in 1850. Why? The year and Branson’s second charge might be the answer. An 1806 law allowed free Black Virginians to carry a firearm with a license, but new laws enacted in 1832 prevented free Black people from carrying firearms of any kind and even those who had received a license prior to 1832 could have permission revoked.⁶ Again, these were a part of a new set of repressive legal measures enacted in the wake of revolts and language of Black revolution.

The court received evidence from William Whealton against Crippen for the use of a firearm. Whealton may have noted Branson’s illegal possession of the weapon prompting officials to also discover his violation of remaining in the state. Because of the changes in laws against free Black people in 1832 and 1848, one sees an increase in the number of charges brought against those remaining in the Commonwealth in these later years (compared to pre-1831 in which there are almost none). The court dropped both charges against Crippen in 1852.

In the 1867 Poll Books listing Black voters in Accomack County, the familiar Crippen name persists. These Crippen men witnessed much change in the first half of the nineteenth century and 1867 marked a milestone year for their rights as free men. Still under military rule following the Civil War, the first election in which Black men could vote was for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868.

Arthur, Edward, Thomas, Lewis, and David Crippen cast their votes in Accomack County for delegates to represent their voices in the crafting of Virginia’s new constitution.⁷ This simple yet powerful statement of civic participation might be the most significant representation of the Black Crippen surname that appears in Virginia Untold records.

I could not determine with certainty that the Crippens or other men listed in these records were the same individuals emancipated in 1818. Surname adoption for formerly enslaved people continues to elude African American genealogists and researchers. Recently at the Virginia Forum conference in late March, I asked professional genealogist Dr. Shelley Murphy: how and when did enslaved and free people adopt or use surnames? It’s still difficult to say, she explained, and shared a statistic from Family Search indicating that only fifteen percent of formerly enslaved people adopted the surname of their enslaver.⁸

Peter Crippen was in that small fifteen percent, but we can’t assume that everyone emancipated by Sarah Crippen chose or used the Crippen surname. Several individuals from Crippen’s deed appear listed in the Accomack County register with no surname at all. The Crippen surname may indicate a biological connection among individuals—both white and Black. Or the name could have been used as a marker to maintain their connections as people migrated and settled in different places.

There are two William Croppers listed in the 1867 Poll Book for Accomack County. There is also a William Gripin. Did the clerk spell his name incorrectly? Could one of these men be the four-year-old William listed in Sarah Crippen’s 1818 deed? Is the aging Esau Riley who cast his vote in 1867 the same eighteen-year-old emancipated alongside so many others in 1818?

As with so many of these stories, I end with many questions. But it’s important that even in the lack of definitive answers, we write down these names—that we read them and share them and think about the lives they represent from our shared past. While frustrating for research, gaps in the documentary record are important in other ways for interpreting African American history. Gaps allow us to demonstrate that white record keepers did not consider the lives and legacies of Black people, free or enslaved, important enough to enter into the “official” record of history. Through these blog posts we call attention to these individuals, highlighting what we know, what we don’t know, and what, one day we might learn.

As far as I know, no written communication from Peter Crippen survives. We are left to wonder if Peter ever wrote home or asked someone to write on his behalf. Did Peter send word to his friends down south that he was starting a church? Did he tell aunts or uncles about his marriage to Clarissa? Did he tell a brother or a sister about the birth of his daughter Hariet, their new niece? Perhaps one day, we will know.