1925 Biography - Robert C. Culpepper

Robert C. Culpepper. Real estate law is so great a legal field that a number of the practitioners have been obliged to divide it into several specialties. One of the most important of these is that pertaining to successions and land titles, which in these days of commercial piracy has itself assumed large proportions. To make a success in this legal domain requires untiring patience, keen business judgment and a broad knowledge of the practical affairs of men and women. To have acquired eminence in it, as has Robert C. Culpepper, of Alexandria, is therefore high tribute to precise and thorough practical wisdom, coupled with good judgment in applying it.

Mr. Culpepper was born in Jackson Parish, Louisiana, May 3l, 1873, a son of Robert M. and Margaret Virginia (Hawthorn) Culpepper, natives respectively of Georgia and Arkansas. Robert M. Culpepper was a lad of fourteen years when he came to Louisiana, and was still a youth when the great struggle between the South and North began. He enlisted in the Twenty-eighth Regiment, Louisiana Volunteer Infantry, in which he rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant, and served throughout the war, on one occasion being wounded and on another captured. On his return he engaged in planting and followed this vocation during the remainder of his active career. Mr. Culpepper was well thought of in his community and served one term as assessor of Jackson Parish. He and his wife were members of the Missionary Baptist Church, and the parents of four Sons and four daughters, of whom six are living, Robert C. being the third in order of birth.

Robert C. Culpepper attended the public schools of his native parish and then pursued a course at the State Normal School at Natchitoches, this preparing him for a career as a teacher. After four years a~ an instructor he left the schoolroom to accept the position of clerk of the court of Jackson Parish, to which he had been elected, and in which he served eight years, from 1900 to 1908, with much credit to himself and to the benefit of the community. He then became his party's candidate for the State Senate, from the Twenty-ninth Senatorial District, was duly elected and held that office for four years. When he left the Senate he accepted the position of cashier of the Jackson Parish Bank, at Jonesboro, continuing in that capacity for three years, and then, in 1911, moving to Alexandria, in the meantime, while otherwise unengaged, he had applied himself to the study of law, completing his preparation by reading law in the office of Hunter & Hawthorn, and in 1912 was admitted to the bar. At that time he formed a partnership with A. M. Pyburn, under the firm style of Culpepper & Pyburn, but since 1921 Mr. Culpepper has practiced alone. While his professional business is general in character, he devotes the greater part of his time to successions and land titles, a field of law in which he has something more than a local reputation. In 1924 he was elected district judge of the Ninth Judicial District. Politically, Mr. Culpepper is a stanch democrat. He is a Blue Lodge and Chapter Mason and belongs to the Baptist Church.

In 1900 Mr. Culpepper was united in marriage with Miss Margaret Wyatt, who was born in Jackson Parish, and to this union there have been born two children: Lillian, who married Emile Drouett, of Meeker, Louisiana, a cane planter; and Robert Wyatt, who is attending school. Mrs. Culpepper died in 1911, and Mr. Culpepper took for his second wife Marguerite Albright, who was born at Durham, North Carolina, a daughter of J. V. and Mamie (Jones) Albright, and a member of an old and honored family of that state. To this union there has been born one son: William Albright, who is attending school. Mrs. Culpepper is a member of the Methodist Church.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, page 217.