John Cropper (23 December 1755–15 January 1821), Continental army and militia officer, was born at Bowman's Folly, the Accomack County plantation of his parents, Sebastian Cropper and Sabra Corbin Cropper. His father died in the spring of 1776 and his mother in December of that year, leaving him a modest inheritance. On 15 August 1776 Cropper married Margaret Pettit. They had four daughters. Two of them, both named for his mother, died in infancy. Of the surviving daughters, one married Thomas Monteagle Bayly and was the mother of Thomas Henry Bayly, both of whom served in the House of Representatives; and one married John Wise, a Speaker of the House of Delegates, and was the mother of Henry Alexander Wise, a congressman and governor of Virginia.
John Cropper Jr., as he signed his name for most of his life, is reported to have begun recruiting a company of minutemen in Accomack County in 1775. In April 1776 the company became part of the new 9th Virginia Regiment, created during the winter of 1775–1776 for the defense of the exposed Eastern Shore counties. Cropper was commissioned a captain in the regiment, to date from 5 February 1776. Early the next year he headed north to join the Continental army and received promotion to major of the 7th Virginia Regiment on 4 January 1777. Wounded on 11 September at the Battle of Brandywine, where his unit suffered substantial losses, Cropper was promoted to lieutenant colonel effective 27 October of that year. He endured the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge and saw duty at Monmouth, New Jersey. In October 1778 he received a 190-day leave to return home for the first time in almost two years.
While Cropper was home on leave in mid-February 1779, a Loyalist's privateer raided and plundered his house. Although Cropper rejoined his regiment at the beginning of August 1779, he disliked being apart from his family, became disenchanted with the condition of his unit, and complained of inadequate pay. On 16 August he resigned his commission. The Continental Congress declined to accept his resignation, but he was allowed to leave his regiment.
Cropper returned to Bowman's Folly. That winter he and the local militia tried unsuccessfully to ambush a British row galley, or barge, marauding among the Eastern Shore inlets. In May 1780 Cropper became a member of the county court. Appointed county lieutenant, or commander of the local militia, during the summer of 1781, he presided at the court-martial of a local Anglican clergyman accused of Loyalism and aiding the enemy. Cropper's most famous exploit occurred late in November 1782, when he and twenty-five volunteers joined a Maryland naval force intent on attacking six British row galleys that had been cruising unmolested in the Chesapeake Bay. On 30 November, Cropper, the Maryland commander, and their men engaged in the futile but heroic battle of the barges in the bay. Cropper sustained several wounds and according to a local legend, repeated many years later in his obituary, was saved from death by one of his former enslaved workers who had run away and was serving on one of the British row galleys. Cropper was briefly a British prisoner but was released after promising the British commander that he would look after and tend wounded members of the British crew.
A portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale, whom Cropper had met during the Revolutionary War, and dated 1792 depicts him as a handsome young man with dark hair and a thickening waist. Although Cropper remained attentive to family matters, his military reputation and lifelong desire for command continued to pull him into public affairs. He lost an election bid to the House of Delegates in 1780 and unsuccessfully contested the polling, but he won election to one-year terms representing Accomack County in 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1790. Cropper sat on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances during the 1784–1785 and 1785–1786 sessions of the assembly and also on the Committee of Claims in the latter session. In October 1786 and October 1787 he arrived too late to receive assignment to a standing committee. During the 1790 session he served on the Committees of Claims, Privileges and Elections, and Propositions and Grievances.
Cropper's wife died on 3 June 1784 while he was in Richmond attending his first assembly, and two years later when the General Assembly authorized creation of a school on the Eastern Shore, it was almost certainly Cropper who arranged to have it named the Margaret Academy, in honor of his late wife. In June 1803 he became president of the academy's board, which eventually erected a large brick building for the boarding school that opened for its first session in 1807 and operated until the Civil War.
On 18 September 1790 Cropper married Catharine Bayly. They had five daughters (among them a third daughter named for his mother, who also died in infancy) and five sons. After a reorganization of the state's militia, in May 1793 Cropper became lieutenant colonel of the 2d Regiment. When war with France threatened in 1799, George Washington placed Cropper's name on a list of possible regimental commanders to be submitted to the president. Before offering Cropper the command, Washington asked John Marshall for advice. Knowing that Cropper was a firm Federalist, Marshall pronounced him "a man of fair character correct politics & unquestionable courage" but cautioned against offering him a commission at a lower rank than he had held during the Revolution lest Cropper feel insulted and decline. Flattered by the letter that Washington sent, Cropper on 4 July 1799 advised the general that any appointment the commanding officer and the president made would be accepted; but the war scare soon dissipated, and Cropper did not serve.
Although Cropper temporarily retired from elective politics in 1791, he remained a committed Federalist and detested the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. From August 1801 until August 1803 he served as sheriff of Accomack County. In August 1812 Cropper helped draft a protest against the declaration of war that Congress had recently adopted against Great Britain. He was elected the following year to the Senate of Virginia for a four-year term representing Accomack and Northampton Counties. During the session that began in December 1815 Cropper chaired a committee to inspect the state's arms manufactory, but the records of the Senate disclose little else about his legislative influence. In spite of his initial opposition to the War of 1812, he retained command of his militia regiment and worked to protect the Eastern Shore from British raids. After the General Assembly elected a colonel junior to him as the new brigadier general, Cropper resigned his commission in March 1813. The assembly created a new 21st Brigade for the Eastern Shore in January 1815 and elected Cropper its first brigadier general.
In 1815 Cropper built a new, large, three-story frame mansion at Bowman's Folly. He was elected president of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati in December 1816 and again the following year. A prosperous and respected local leader, he paid taxes on twenty enslaved workers age twelve or older and almost 1,300 acres of land in 1820. John Cropper died at Bowman's Folly on 15 January 1821 and was buried in the family cemetery there.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Barton Haxall Wise, Memoir of General John Cropper of Accomack County, Virginia, in Collections of the Virginia Historical Society, new ser., 11 (1892): 273–315, and Alton Brooks Parker Barnes, John Cropper: A Life Fully Lived (1989); birth and death dates on gravestone; birth and marriage dates in Cropper family Bible records (1755–1900), Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), Richmond; John Cropper Papers, VMHC; Cropper letters in Papers of the Continental Congress, Record Group 360, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C., in W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Retirement Series (1998–1999), 4:116 (quotation), 125–128, 174, and in Executive Papers of several Virginia governors, State Records Collection, Record Group 3, Library of Virginia; Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications, RG 15, NARA; William H. Gaines Jr., "The Battle of the Barges," Virginia Cavalcade 4 (autumn 1954): 33–37 (portrait by Charles Willson Peale on 35); election as brigadier general in Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1814–1815 sess., 151; will in Accomack Co. Wills (1819–1821), 336–337; obituaries in Richmond Enquirer, 30 Jan. 1821, and Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 1 Feb. 1821.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Kolp.
How to cite this page:
John G. Kolp, "John Cropper (1755–1821)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cropper_John, accessed [today's date]).
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