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Crump Family Genealogy

The Crumps were the best-documented of all my family lines, tracing back to Sgt. Thomas Crump at Jamestown in 1624. In the family's saga, "A Crump on Every Stump," the lineage is traced into Lancaster County and then to New Kent where it primarily remains today. However, the Crump DNA Project has disproven our Jamestown origins, and we are are in search of our true heritage.

The Crumps, Smiths, Cooks and Chandlers have a strong common identity and still maintain their old Methodist Church, the New Kent Memorial Chapel, est. 1863. The memorial association maintains the building and cemetery, and meets on the first Sunday in May each year.

For now, I'll start with great-great-great-great grandparents. Jesse Crump (1754-1812) and Elizabeth Crump (1765-1815) married around 1785. They were cousins who shared our most distant proven ancestor Stephen Crump (1655-1700) as a great-grandfather. There are six known children beginning in 1786, and my GGG grandfather Isaac came pretty late, at 1811.

Isaac Crump (1811-abt.1848) married Sarah Wilkes (b.1805 in New Kent) and this marriage appears to have produced only two sons. The first was my great-great grandfather Hammond Fletcher Crump, and one brother Lemuel W. Crump. The 1850 census shows the two boys living with their widowed mother.

Most Crumps in contact today descended from my great-great-grandfather Hammond Fletcher Crump, Sr. (1840-1919) H.F. Crump was a colorful guy. A blacksmith by trade, he also rode with J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry (Company F, 3rd VA Cavalry) in the Civil War. He was wounded at Hawe's Shop in May 1864 and alternate tales tell of him losing a leg, being shot in the shoulder, and taking a musket ball to the center of his forehead.  What we do know is that we worked as a blacksmith, courted two wives and raised his family, all on that one leg.

H.F's first wife (and my GG grandmother) was Mary Aurelia "Mollie" Cook (1840-1886) daughter of Col. Richard Pye Cook (1813-1889) and Sarah Ann Eliza Chandler (1814-1879). All are buried at New Kent Memorial Chapel on Cooks Mill Road (SR623) just west of New Kent Courthouse. Richard and Sarah Cook are the only GGG grandparents I have whose graves are known. When Mollie died after having seven kids, HF soon married her niece Margaret Aurelia "Grandma Ree" Smith (1860-1940) and promptly had seven more.

Charles Pryor Crump (1872-1955) stayed right in New Kent and kept the farming flame alive. I don't know how or why, but he was located for a while in Charlotte County, where he met and married his wife, Grace Eliza Holt (1878-1958) in 1906. The Holt family dates back to the 1640's in Rochedale, England and then St. Mary's, MD. Coming to Essex County, VA after some trouble in Maryland, they migrated to Amelia, Charlotte and Campbell Counties, where Grace's father Burwell Nicholas Holt (1836-1922) lived with his wife Charlotte Elizabeth East (1841-1932). The Holts are a fascinating and well-documented family. Most of their reasearchers are unaware of my Great-grandmother, so it's forunate that her marriage record still exists. The Crumps raised their family at Laurel Springs on the Pamunkey River, which they rented for years. They eventually inherited the farm from the Chandlers, and my great uncle Charles Nicholas Crump lives there today.

Pryor Crump had five children including my grandmother Manie Charlotte Crump (1909-1974) who married Henry George Cramer (1894-1960). In 1939, they settled on a little 12-acre farm in Henrico County (now 4200 Wistar Road) where they spent the rest of their lives and where their younger children built homes as well. The Cramers are buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery just outside of Richmond.

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