Charles J. P. Cresap

Born to Gustavus Cresap (1806-1884) and Ruhamah Pindall (1808-1900) on August 17, 1836 in what was then Preston County, Virginia, Pin Cresap had two brothers (Gustavus Jr. and Robert) and three sisters.[1] His paternal family had explored, settled and defended the Maryland and Virginia frontier since before the American Revolutionary War. His ancestor Thomas Cresap (1702-1799) and relative Michael Cresap fought the British and settled the frontier. Young Pin Cresap received an education and read law. He later married Agnes C. Crawford (1827-1900), but they did not have any children.

After admission to the Virginia bar in 1857, Pin Cresap initially lived and practiced in Kingwood, the county seat of Preston County (in what became West Virginia after the American Civil War).

Months after the Virginia Secession Convention expelled Unconditional Unionists William G. Brown (a former Virginia General Assembly delegate and U.S. Congressman) and James Clark McGrew on June 29, 1861 because of the Wheeling Convention that May, five men from Preston County meeting at a Confederate camp in Pocahontas County on October 24, 1861 elected Cresap to replace McGrew and Robert E. Cowan (another lawyer and married to Cresap's eldest sister) to replace Brown.[2][3]

Cresap volunteered at Camp Allegheny to serve in the Virginia militia on April 1, 1862. Documentation indicates he was already serving as a second lieutenant (one-year enlistments were common in early 1861), and even that he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (which that institution's records failed to confirm). Cresap was admitted to field hospitals at least three times for camp sicknesses in 1862, and in early 1863 was a commissary sergenat (which may have involved raiding), but disciplined twice that August, after which he requested permission in November 1863 to raise a company of infantry or cavalry in northwest Virginia, for which he would receive the rank of captain. He may not have succeeded, for he requested permission from Jefferson Davis to raise colored troops and receive a rank above captain.[4] Civil War draft records from Union-controlled Preston County in October 1863 indicate both Robert E. Cowen and Charles C.J. Cresap were in the rebel army. His brother Robert also enlisted in Confederate service and died in the cavalry Battle of Moorefield on August 7, 1864.[5] In January 1865, rebel raiders from across the Potomac River who met at what became Cresap Park in Cumberland, Maryland abducted two Union generals.[6] After the war, his father Gustavus Cresap pleaded for his children to be allowed to return home.[7]

Cresap continued his legal practice in West Virginia, but moved to Beverly, West Virginia, in Randolph County, West Virginia (then the county seat and about six miles from Elkins which became the county seat in 1900). In 1871 Cresap bought what had been the Rising Sun Hotel (destroyed during the war but rebuilt by Rev. Birkitt), and made it his home. Randolph County voters elected him to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1881.[8]

Cresap died in Beverly, survived by his widow and several siblings. He is buried in the family plot at Maplewood Cemetery in Kingwood, Preston County.[9] After his death, his handwritten will provoked litigation, with his siblings contesting whether his widow could sell the family property. The case went to the West Virginia Court of Appeals, which decided that the will created a trust, with only a life estate in his widow/executor.[10] The house was eventually held by his niece, and sold several times, but remains today as a Contributing property in the Beverly Historic District.[11][12] Various papers relating to the Cresap family are held by the University of Maryland Archives.[13]