Farming is life

RIXEYVILLE — Education, service to country, hard work, industriousness, faith in God and struggle punctuate the last two centuries of Crigler family history at Clifton in northwest Culpeper County.
Farming was life here and yet there was much more to life than farming for the generations of Criglers who survived and thrived on the evolved 241-acre farmstead that’s been in the family since it was built in 1845.

“There are no crystal chandeliers or silver service in the dining room,” said Kathy Ellis, the latest Crigler descendant to call Clifton home. “They didn’t have it easy.”

And yet the Criglers contributed deeply from Clifton — a simply elegant Greek Revival farmhouse on the Thornton River that is Culpeper County’s latest property to earn a place on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.

Officially recognized in July for its architectural and agricultural significance, Clifton retains one of the largest collections of farm outbuildings in the region, including an icehouse, ash house, smokehouse and an original 19th century detached kitchen with an upstairs sleeping loft.

Clifton slaves once used the two-story structure for preparing meals and lodging. Ellis wants to renovate it as an apartment, calling the old kitchen, just steps from the former dining room in the basement, “My heart.”

Three times expanded in 1850, 1868 and 1910, Clifton today is three times its original form, and growing, to accommodate a 21st century family interested in its history and looking to preserve and celebrate it through educational outreach and visits with extended family, friends and young people.

“Robert and I very much feel we are stewards of something that has been here for generations and hope will continue to contribute to Culpeper for generations to come,” said Mrs. Ellis during a summertime interview.

Those contributions run deep.

The backbone of Culpeper
Down the line, starting as early as the 18th century in Madison County, the Criglers, of German descent, were middle-class farmers with a strong work ethic. The Culpeper Criglers settled Clifton and the Gourdvine area around 1845. The farm soon became known statewide for its award-winning corn and fine horses.

The family later sold Boxwood clippings — used for making Christmas wreaths — and turkeys to city folk in Washington. Clifton also produced cream, eggs, hams and sauerkraut for sale and consumption at home.

“I think that (farming) is the backbone of Culpeper,” said Ellis, a 50-something registered nurse, historian and former tour guide at Patrick Henry’s Scotchtown in Hanover County.

Early Criglers also helped form the foundation for the county’s early education system, a history that’s been passed down through the generations.

Early educators
George Roberts Crigler (1807-1900), a.k.a. “Roberts,” was the Crigler who had Clifton built.

Soon after, he opened a school for boys on the farm around 1850. Here, he taught “serious” subjects like Latin, math, history and geography, Ellis said, as evidenced by still-surviving books from the school, which closed as the Civil War erupted around it.

Inside one book is the name of Roberts Crigler’s daughter, Sarah Virginia, an observation that pleased Ellis as it was not common for females to receive serious instruction back then. “My great-grandfather was enlightened,” she said.

Even further, in October1857, Roberts Crigler was one of 10 citizens appointed to the second-ever Culpeper County School Board. Although it is not known where Roberts attended school, he was known in the area as a “mathematical brain,” Ellis said.

William Gideon Crigler (1840-1921), a.k.a. “Gid,” his son, taught at Clifton School as well.

He was listed as a teacher in 1861 when he joined the Little Fork Rangers and fought for the Confederacy.

Civil War days
Away from home at war, Gid brought with him “two good horses” from Clifton, of course, for which he was given a $150 credit, according to the National Registry nomination prepared by Gibson Worsham, an architectural historian from Richmond.

A skilled horseman who worked as a courier under Gen. James Longstreet at the Battle of Manassas, Gid later joined (Col. John Singleton) Mosby’s Partisan Rangers and helped capture 200 Union wagons filled with guns near Berryville.

Back home in Culpeper during the war, Union and Confederate soldiers were nursed at Clifton; two are buried out back in the family cemetery, including Hannibal Nestor of Louisiana’s Franklin Parish Sharpshooters and an unknown Federal soldier.

Berta Crigler, a nurse who was George Roberts’ daughter and Gid’s sister, never married and was the one who cared for the wounded soldiers, Ellis said. Mr. Nestor, with the 8th La. Infantry, died of measles at Clifton.

“From oral history, we understand there was also a Federal who died here and they buried them side by side,” Ellis said. “They felt they were both young boys and it was sort of a metaphor for the war.”

Berta was buried next in the family cemetery in 1875.

After the Civil War, Gid returned to Clifton, expanded the place and moved in his new bride, 19-year-old Mary Ellen Parr. The couple had four children and Gid, a quiet man who never talked much about his war exploits, worked on the family farm, attempting to rebuild.

He often had nightmares about the war.

In 1872, Gid was real estate tax assessor for the Jeffersonton district of Culpeper and around 1890 began his two-decade tenure as clerk of Gourdvine Baptist Church, where many generations of Criglers have worshipped.

So much history to preserve, and Ellis knows it.

A huge leap
A registered nurse and historian, Ellis moved to Clifton fulltime with her husband Robert in May of 2007 following many weekends of work in the old house — he’s an engineer blessed with construction knowledge.

The Ellis’ move also followed the death in 1995 of Kathy’s Uncle Hugh Davidson, immediate past farmer at Clifton who was known for saving everything.

It was “a huge leap,” Ellis said, but she also wanted to be closer to her parents, Mary Miller Crigler Boldridge, who grew up and was born at Clifton, and Frank Boldridge, who grew up nearby at Homeland.

The Boldridges are in their 90s and live at the Virginia Baptist Home in Culpeper.

For the Ellises, moving to Clifton meant leaving behind 30 years of living and working in Hanover, where Kathy and Robert raised two sons and founded deep friendships. But Ellis says she loves Culpeper and living at Clifton.

She felt the history so valuable at Clifton that she pursued the National Registry process soon after relocating. Worsham completed the lengthy application, compiling Clifton’s history with Ellis through oral interviews, written family history and other local history sources.

She felt the recent national recognition of Clifton pays tribute to “the years of hard work of a fairly typical Culpeper farm family.” Homes on the National Register are not always associated with a lot of wealth, as some might think, Ellis said.

“People think we have some difficulties now,” Ellis said. “It’s just an inspiration to realize what they went through. The Civil War is happening all around you. You’re watching your neighbor’s house be burned.”

At one point, the farm was almost lost to bankruptcy, a fact to be explored in Sunday’s story.

Farming is life
Spending summers at Clifton as a child, Ellis said her relatives never really talked much about the history that happened there.

They were too busy farming.

But Mrs. Boldridge, Gid’s granddaughter, heard about it some, passing it on to her daughter — “The oral history she has been able to provide has been a tremendous factor in being able to understand what went on here,” Ellis said.

In a recent interview at the Culpeper Baptist Home, Mrs. Boldridge remembered her childhood at Clifton as a time of stability, seasonal rhythms, close ties with family and servants and long rides on horseback across the Culpeper countryside.

She offered a simple reason why Clifton has remained in the Crigler clan for so long.

“Well, it was home to most of them,” Mrs. Boldridge said. “Some left, but some stayed. I guess they liked farming. In those days, you farmed and you didn’t sit at an awful lot. My grandfather had a school, taught school, but farming was the main way of making a living.”

Her ancestors were hardworking and creative, she agreed, but it was not necessarily out of choice. “They had to be industrious to survive,” Boldridge said.

And wasn’t always easy. In fact, slaves helped run the Clifton Farm, a piece of history the family openly acknowledges and appreciates today. Descendants of slaves stayed on after emancipation as well, living and worshipping with the Criglers.

And to think the legacy at Clifton all began with family patriarch Jacob Crigler, a German immigrant who mistakenly ended up in bondage in Virginia in 1717.

Check out Sunday’s Star-Exponent for part two of the story documenting two centuries of life at Clifton.