Richard Eppes News Today

Horror of Nat Turner's bloody slave rebellion remains vivid 186 years later

Following their genealogical trail, three ladies in their 80s have found their roots in Hopewell, Virginia. They are descendants of Captain Francis Epps.

Richard Eppes was born Richard Eppes Cocke on May 2, 1824, in Prince George County. His father, Benjamin Cocke, managed the family estates that his wife, Mary Eppes Cocke, had inherited at Eppes Island, in Charles City County; Bermuda Hundred, in Chesterfield County; and City Point (later Hopewell), in Prince George County. Benjamin Cocke did not prove a successful planter, however, and he made a living through a blacksmith shop and shad fishing. When he died in 1836, the estates returned to M...

The Confessions of Nat Turner. According to The Confessions, Turner was born into slavery on a Southampton plantation on October 2, 1800. He could read and write, which was unusual for an enslaved person of that time and place, and he owned a Bible. He had a family, including a grandmother to whom he was “much attached”; a father who escaped slavery; and a wife and son, who lived on a neighboring farm. He was deeply religious, “devoting [his] time to fasting and prayer,” and experienc...