1597-1674
Was the son of John Epes and Thomasine Fisher, he was baptised at St. Mary’s 14th May 1597 and lived on North Street.
Some time before 1625 (one source suggests 1622) Epps sailed to Virginia in a ship of named Hopewell; possibly with his brother Peter, both following their elder brother William to the new world. Eppes convinced six desperate people to accompany him, who he then sold as indentured servants. They would have had to work for between three and seven years. This started a small population for the first time in that part of America which was named after the ship that originally carried Eppes to Virginia. As well as the money paid for the contracts for the servants, Eppes was granted a headright of 50 or 100 acres per servant. He undertook six such journeys, on the third of which he took his family to Virginia who he settled in a house he built on headright land. He was then able to claim headright on himself and his family.
In April 1625 when he was elected from Shirley Hundred to sit in the Assembly of James City in May of that year, when he began a career of public service.
He gained patents to huge tracts of land in the Virginia Colony, and was the most successful of the Eppes family that emigrated to the New World. His plantation remained in family hands until 1978.
The Appomattox were an Algonquin-speaking tribe and part of the original five tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy. According to John Smith, an early explorer, the Appomattox had 60 warriors in 1607. By 1616, that number doubled to 120. However, their numbers dwindled, and the tribe was considered extinct by 1722.
Their early encounters with colonists had been peaceful until 1613 when Sir Thomas Dale pushed the tribe away from the mouth of the Appomattox River in order to create the town of City Point.