Frances Culpeper Berkeley

Frances Stephens Berkeley Ludwell (née Culpeper; baptised 27 May 1634 – 1690s), most commonly styled Lady Berkeley after her second marriage, was a leader of the Green Spring faction of Virginia politics in the seventeenth century and wife to three colonial governors.

Biography

Frances Culpeper was born in Hollingbourne, Kent. Her father was Thomas Culpeper, and her mother was Katherine St Leger; her brother was the John Culpeper who later led Culpeper's Rebellion. The youngest of her parents' five children, she was born into a family with numerous interests in the colony of Virginia; her father had become a member of the Virginia Company of London in 1623, and in 1649 was made one of the original patent-holders of the Northern Neck.

The year in which Frances arrived to the New World is unknown, although she is said to have come with her parents around 1650. She was in the colonies by 1652, in which year she married Samuel Stephens of Warwick County, Virginia. The couple had no children. Her husband became "Commander of the Southern Plantation" in 1662, serving in that role for two years; in 1667 he became governor of Albemarle, holding that position until dying in 1670. At his death she inherited a plantation, called Balthrope or Boldrup, in Warwick County, a provision which had been agreed to before their marriage; unusually for a woman at the time she managed the estate herself instead of handing it over to a man. As there were no other heirs she received absolute possession of her husband's estate.