"Christopher Reeve's Downfall" Culpeper by grandmaR

Our main reason for going to Culpepper (or - as VT has it- Culpeper) was to compete at the horse park there. They had novice and training level events, and sometimes pony club rallies in Culpepper. This park was where Christopher Reeves had the fall that made him a paraplegic.

I have been unable to figure out how Culpepper came to be named. The name may have come from Lord Culpepper, one of the favorites of the king whom he appointed and "to whom he had leased the province for the term of a generation, governor of the domain for life, with a salary double in amount that received by the late magistrate, because he was a peer. It now became a proprietary colony. Culpepper went there reluctantly, in 1680, with instructions to bury all animosities growing out of Bacon's "rebellion." But the profligate governor began his administration by disfranchising all of the willing followers of Bacon. He despoiled the colonists of privilege after privilege, and exercised measures which impoverished them. By a proclamation forbidding, under severest penalties, all disrespectful words concerning the governor and his administration, he closed the royal ear against all complaints of his tyranny; and having accumulated, by a system of pillage, a considerable sum of money, he returned to England to spend it in dissipation.

"Culpepper returned to Virginia in 1682. his profligacy and rapacity so disgusted the people and fostered discontents, that, unable to endure him longer, they broke out into insurrection. His false reports of the matter included the king to issue an order for the hanging of several of the most influential leaders; but at length the true state of the case was laid before Charles, and he recalled the grant made to Culpepper and Arlington, and constituted Virginia a royal province again. Lord Howard of Effingham was sent over as governor in Culpepper's place."

His claim of territory was in dispute, but his land went to his daughter.

The next reference I find to Culpepper other than notations of people born there is to the "Culpeper Minute Men."

"This unit was organized in May 1775, and served courageously in the first Revolutionary War battle in Virginia at Great Bridge, near Norfolk in December 1775. After the war, this unit designation was not disbanded and men were still assigned to it in 1806. One researcher indicates men were assigned to this Battalion in Culpeper and trained and fought as Culpeper Minute Men in the War of 1812. In 1860, this unit was again organized on the same field in Culpeper as was first used in 1775, and under their famous Rattlesnake Flag."