Edenborough G. Corprew (d. 16 July 1881), Baptist minister, was born late in the 1820s or in 1830 probably in Norfolk County, where he grew up. His parents, George W. Corprew and Grace Corprew, were enslaved. George W. Corprew had learned to read and write, skills that he passed along surreptitiously to his son, and before the Civil War he had contracted to purchase himself, his wife, and their underage children. By that time, E. G. Corpew was owned by another master, had married, and about 1851 had fathered a son. He reportedly suffered the experience of having both his first and second wives sold away from him. Silvia Ann Scott Corprew, who is recorded with him in the 1870 census, was most likely his third wife. After her death on 30 October 1876, Corprew married Mary Etta Lane Gordon, a widow, on 22 November 1877. No children are recorded from his third or fourth marriages, but sometime after 1870 he adopted and raised a daughter.

When and how Corprew secured his freedom are not known. Former slaves flocked to Norfolk after Union forces occupied the city on 10 May 1862. Religious organizations began sending missionaries to eastern Virginia to provide education and services to the freedpeople, including the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Corprew became associated with the society in June 1864, and from 1865 to 1868 worked as a missionary in Portsmouth, where he preached, performed baptisms, and provided an education to as many as four hundred students in Sunday school classes. Corprew and his father became leaders among the freedpeople in the area. Norfolk men discussed the need to organize in order to protect their rights when civil government was restored in Virginia, and E. G. Corprew attended the National Convention of Colored Men, in Syracuse, New York, in October 1864, which called for full civil rights for African Americans. His father became treasurer of Norfolk's Colored Monitor Union Club, founded on 4 April 1865 to promote unity among the freedmen and to advocate universal suffrage and other rights of citizens.

Simultaneously, African Americans began to take control of their religious institutions, authority previously denied them under Virginia law. Corprew was prominent among the 318 Black members of the Court Street Baptist Church, in Portsmouth, who requested a letter of dismissal from the white church in order to found their own congregation. After the letter was granted on 9 March 1865, he served as the first clerk for meetings of the new Zion Baptist Church's deacons. On 28 May a committee consisting of a representative from the church, a Union army chaplain, and representatives from the Court Street Church and from two Norfolk Baptist churches met and, after administering an examination, ordained Corprew to the ministry. Already the congregation's spiritual leader, he became its pastor and continued in that office until his death.

Corprew had no formal education, but church records in his handwriting reportedly display a good hand and adequate spelling. After his ordination, the congregation gave him leave to study theology for a short period at the Richmond Theological School for Freedmen (popularly known as the Richmond Theological Institute or Colver Institute and a predecessor of Virginia Union University), but his continuing education came primarily from books. Contemporaries considered his library the largest owned by any African American clergyman in Virginia.

In May 1865 Corprew and other leaders of the Zion Baptist Church formally requested that the Court Street Baptist Church transfer to them a lot on Green Street that the latter church had purchased in 1859 with the intention of building a separate church there for its Black members. The white church's trustees readily agreed to the transfer, although complications prevented proper recording of the deed until 1870. In the meantime Corprew's congregation proceeded to erect a frame church on the site, which opened for worship about July 1866. Fire destroyed the building in the winter of 1869–1870, but the congregation built a new brick structure, which was dedicated in July 1876.

On 4 May 1867 fifteen clergy- and laymen met at the Zion Baptist Church to form the Virginia Baptist State Convention. Corprew not only hosted the meeting but also was elected first vice president of the convention. He served as superintendent of the Zion Baptist Sunday School and as president of the Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Berkley Sunday School Union. The Portsmouth city council, under Republican control at the time, elected him clerk of the city market for two years, but he did not play a prominent role in politics as an activist or officeholder.

Corprew acquired quite a bit of property. At the time of his death he owned four lots with houses, along with a vacant lot, all in Portsmouth, in addition to his own house on Effingham Street. He served on the advisory committee of the Norfolk Freedman's Savings and Trust Company bank and also held stock in the Home Savings Bank of Norfolk, of which he was a director.

Edenborough G. Corprew fell ill with consumption (probably tuberculosis) and wrote his will on 28 March 1881. He died at his Portsmouth home on 16 July of that year. His funeral followed two days later from Zion Baptist Church, which could accommodate only a quarter of those who came to mourn. No fewer than nine brother clergymen participated in the funeral services and followed his remains to the cemetery. Corprew, like his father, was one of those obscure yet remarkable men who emerged from slavery to found lasting institutions after emancipation. "His loss to his community," reported the Washington People's Advocate, was "well nigh irreparable."

Sources Consulted:
Biography in Zion Baptist Church: An Authentic History… [1949], 11–12 (portrait), with birth ca. 1822 in Norfolk Co.; United States Census Schedules, Norfolk Co., 1870 (age forty on 9 Aug. 1870), 1880 (age fifty on 1 June 1880), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Portsmouth Marriage Register (1877), with age as forty-nine on 22 Nov. 1877 and birthplace of Norfolk Co., most likely provided by Corprew; Portsmouth Death Register (age fifty-five on 16 July 1881 and birthplace of North Carolina provided by widow); Portsmouth Hustings Court Will Book, 1:237–238; death and funeral notices in Norfolk Landmark, 17 (age "about fifty"), 19 July 1881, Norfolk Virginian, 17 (age "about 55"), 19 July 1881, and Norfolk Public Ledger, 18 July 1881; obituaries in Richmond Virginia Star, 23 July 1881, and Washington People's Advocate, 30 July 1881 (quotation).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John T. Kneebone.

How to cite this page:
John T. Kneebone, "Edenborough G. Corprew (d. 1881)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006, rev. 2022 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Corprew_Edenborough_G., accessed [today's date]).

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