James Crewes
American politician in Virginia

James Crewes (or Crews) (1622 – 26 January 1677) was an English merchant who traded with the Virginia colony before emigrating there. He became a planter in Henrico County and represented it for one session of the House of Burgesses, but was executed for his participation in Bacon's Rebellion.
Early life
Born in England in 1622 or 1623, he had at least two brothers who were merchants.
Career
Crewes often traveled between the colony and England as a tobacco merchant. In 1652 he testified in a legal case about the death of Francis Giles at Jordan's Point in the colony. By 1655, Crewes had acquired 541 acres and established a tobacco plantation in Henrico County on Turkey Island in the James River. By 1670 he had become captain in the local militia, and surviving court records indicate he was involved as a trustee and executor of estates. Crewes had indentured servants, including two of African descent, and had permission to have a servant of Indian descent, possibly to assist him with fur trading. By the time of his death, Crewes also owned a store and a substantial house with four fireplaces.
Crewes befriended the young adventurer immigrant Nathaniel Bacon and became one of his most loyal supporters.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “James Crewes” as american politician in Virginia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american politician in Virginia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39046663. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1622, 1677, 1623 and 1652.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Crewes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.