Katherine Graves Roper Sprigg

Katherine Graves Roper Sprigg, also called Catherine or Kathryne in the supplied material, was born about 1622. She lived on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in what is now Northampton County, first as the wife of William Roper Sr. and later as the wife of Thomas Sprigg Sr. Records cited in the notes place her remarriage by 3 March 1651. She died before September 1668, when Thomas Sprigg was identified as the husband of Eleanor Nuthall.

Katherine Graves, called Catherine and Kathryne in the supplied material, was born about 1622. She was associated with Accawmack, later Northampton County, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

About 1636, she married William Roper Sr., who was also a resident of Accawmack. He represented Northampton County as a burgess and maintained a plantation on a small neck of land with waterfront access, where the notes state that he carried on a profitable trade. Their children were William Roper Jr. and Verlinda Roper. William Jr. was named as the recipient of a calf in the will of his godfather, William Burdett.

William Roper Sr. died about 1650 in Virginia. After his death, Katherine married Thomas Sprigg Sr. The documentary material cited in the notes shows that she was already his wife by 3 March 1651. On 1 March 1651, Thomas Sprigg co-signed a Northampton County deed from Kathryne Roper to her daughter, Verlinda Roper. Two days later, Katherine added a note stating that she had made the deed with the “approbacon of my nowe husband, Mr. Thomas Sprigge.” The note was signed by “Kathryne Roper” and “Thomas Sprigg.”

Thomas Sprigg was described in the supplied material as a justice of Northampton County, Virginia, and later as High Sheriff, Justice, and Commissioner of Calvert County, Maryland. A later account states that he was first married to Katherine Roper and later married Eleanor Nuthall. Katherine’s death is therefore placed before September 1668, when a Maryland Council order identified Eleanor as the wife of Thomas Sprigg. The supplied materials give conflicting death information, including about 1660 and 4 July 1668; the evidence summarized here supports only that she died before September 1668.

Historical context

Katherine’s life connected Virginia’s Eastern Shore with Maryland. The 1651 Northampton County deed is a surviving record of her family transactions after the death of her first husband and during her marriage to Thomas Sprigg. Later Maryland material associates Thomas Sprigg with Calvert County and identifies his subsequent marriage by September 1668.

Sources & research

Northampton County, Virginia, Orders, Wills, Deeds, Book 4, 1651–1654, p. 189.
Kenneth Graves, Descendants of Capt. Thomas Graves, http://www.gravesfa.org/gen169.htm.
Sharon J. Doliante, Maryland and Virginia Colonials: Genealogies of Some Colonial Families (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1991).
John Frederick Dorman, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia 1607–1624/5 (1987).
Henry Chandlee Forman, Tidewater Maryland Architecture and Gardens, a Sequel to Early Manor and Plantation Houses of Maryland, section “Sprigg’s Northampton and L’Enfant’s Garden.”
Jane Baldwin, The Maryland Calendar of Wills, Volume I: Wills from 1635 (Earliest Probated) to 1685 (Baltimore, Maryland: Kohn & Pollock, 1904), Source S276.
Ancestry Family Trees, Source S-2096736708, repository R-2142803482, Ancestry Family Tree, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/11795205/family.
Ancestry Family Trees, Source S-197484730, repository R-799740786, Ancestry Family Tree, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/56797399/family.
Ancestry.com, repository R-799740786, http://www.Ancestry.com.