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Facts and Events
One tradition has it that about 1680 Nathaniel Davis, a native of Wales, married a child of Nicketti, a daughter of Opechancahough, the brother of Powhatan. Their son Robert Davis was an ancester of Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA.
According to another record, Martha Davis, who married Abraham Venable II, was a daugher of Nathaniel Davis. Elizabeth Marshall Venable says, "Hugh Lewis came first with this wife and daughter, Abediah Lewis, and lost his wife in America and returned to Britain with Abediah, his only daughter, and both returned again to America in Virginia, with Robert Davis, who came away without the consent of his parents, and served four years in Virginia, King & Queen County, for his passage, and then married Abediah Lewis, with whom he emigrated. The descendants who prefer for their heritage the romance of the Indian Princess, Nikitti, will find preferable the account in 'Cabells and their Kin' We believe that of our own family record is more nearly correct."
References
- Jackson Sterett Moorman. Ancestors of Mary Burr Moorman (Harpole), et al. (Louisville, KY, Nov. 15, 1945)
p. 5, 30 Jul 2006. - Seaman, Catherine Hawes Coleman. Tuckahoes and Cohees: the settlers and cultures of Amherst and Nelson counties 1607-1807. (Sweet Brier, Virginia: Sweet Briar College Printing Press, c1992)
pg. 73.
Elizabeth Cabell's grandfather, Nathanael Davis, was likely a Quaker, and it may have been her relationship to members of the Society of Friends, that kept her safe on the frontier (A.Brown: 1895:45). However, Elizabeth herself was a woman ahead of her time. She was not only responsible for seating the "first English patent" in old Goochland in 1738, she managed the plantation and reared her family far from the white settlements of Goochland County while her husband. Dr. William Cabell, was in England for six years. Cabell, called away to England on business, left "his loving wife, Elizabeth Cabbell" in charge of the two patents, one of 4800 acres taken in 1738. and the other for 400 acres in 1739. The patents lay in "the last hunting ground of the Indian east of the Blue Ridge." Alexander Brown described Elizabeth as managing the affairs of her absent husband quite well. He describes her as "a colonial dame, who mounted on her good steed and attended by her trusty men, rode fearlessly into the wild woods, whenever occasion required to overlook these lands - the planting of them, and the preventing of encroachment upon them. She paid the quit-rents, taxes, etc.. attended to all legal requirements within her power, and. on her husband's return in 1741, turned his affairs over to him in comparatively good shape ... tradition ... has it that Mrs. Elizabeth Cabell was descended from an Indian princess of the Powhatan tribe, and that "it was the knowledge among the neighboring Indians of this descent which protected her husband while locating these lands, and herself when she was managing them in his absence" but he adds that her Quaker connections may as well have accounted for her safety.
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