John Cralle (d. by 11 January 1813), member of the Convention of 1776, was born in Northumberland County about 1730 or 1731 and was the son of John Cralle and the thrice-widowed Hannah Kenner Hull Harris Cralle Cralle, her third husband having been the younger brother of her fourth husband. Even though his father died in 1758, he was known until the mid-1770s as John Cralle Jr., a convenient way of distinguishing him from his elder half brother and other near relatives of the same name, most of whom lived in the same part of Saint Stephen's Parish. Occasional references to members of the family as Crallé or Crawley suggest the pronunciation of the surname. About April 1752 Cralle married Sarah Harding. They had at least two sons and two daughters before her death.
In July 1765 and in November 1768 Cralle was an unsuccessful candidate for the House of Burgesses. He had not yet become a justice of the peace, the principal local office to which young men with political aspirations usually won early appointment, and he did not become a captain in the county militia until 1771. During the winter of 1774–1775 Cralle was elected to the Northumberland County Committee, established to enforce regulations the Continental Congress and the colonial conventions adopted. In April 1776 he won election to the last of the Revolutionary Conventions. Cralle was appointed to the Committee of Privileges and Elections and was almost certainly present on 15 May when the convention unanimously voted for independence and again on 12 June when it unanimously adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He left Williamsburg about 21 June to take command of his militia company, which was charged with keeping an eye on British raiding parties operating in the Chesapeake Bay. Cralle therefore missed the final convention debates and vote on adoption of the first constitution of Virginia and the election of the first governor of the commonwealth.
Cralle returned to Williamsburg in October 1776 as a member of the House of Delegates and resumed his seat on the Committee of Privileges and Elections. It is unclear whether it was he or another man (identified in the House journal as John Crawley) who petitioned the General Assembly in the autumn of 1776 for compensation for property damaged when a British party occupied his house in June and July. The delegates never passed on the merits of the claim. Either defeated or choosing not to seek reelection in 1777, Cralle did not again serve in state government, but he finally became a member of the county court in the summer of that year and sheriff in 1790.
Cralle was a member of the vestry of Saint Stephen's Parish as early as 1778, but within five years he had joined the Baptists. He was an early member and perhaps a founder of Morattico Baptist Church. After executing a bond on 18 February 1793 he married a widow, Mary Leland Haynie. They had no children during their nearly twenty years of marriage. Cralle was described as "very aged & infirm" in June 1811 when he verified a signature on an old will, and on 23 September 1812 he made his mark rather than signing his name on the last document he is known to have executed. The date on which John Cralle died is not recorded. He and his namesake son both died about the same time and without leaving wills. On 11 January 1813 the county court awarded his widow dower rights to her third of his estate. At the time of his death Cralle owned at least thirty-two enslaved workers and more than 400 acres of land, and an estate inventory valued his personal property at more than $10,000.
Sources Consulted:
Family history, with some inaccuracies and conflations, in Horace Edwin Hayden, Virginia Genealogies: A Genealogy of the Glassell Family … (1891), 117–120; signature verifying name in Revolutionary War Receipt Book (Aug.–Oct. 1776), Record Group 2, Library of Virginia (LVA); Northumberland Co. Marriage Bonds (1793); Northumberland Co. Order Book (1770–1773), 82; Northumberland Co. Record Book, 19:70–71 (quotation on 70), 277 (last recorded document); Land and Personal Property Tax Returns, Northumberland Co. (1782–1813), Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, LVA; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), 2:264, 6:383, 385, 7:24, 61, 232, 577; William P. Palmer et al., eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1869 (1875–1893), 6:621; J. Motley Booker, "The Middle Meeting House: An Early Church of the Baptists in Northumberland County," Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society 16 (1979): 6–8; wife's dower rights, estate inventory and sale, division of enslaved workers, and related documents in Northumberland Co. Record Book, 19:325–326, 483–490, 531, 20:60–62, 110–111, and Northumberland Co. Order Book (1811–1815), 141, 192, 310, 314.