Person:William Cabell (3)

CABELL, William, pioneer, was born in Warminster, England March 20, 1700 ¹ [new style], the eldest son of Nicholas and Rachel Hooper Cabell, and a grandson of William Cabell, who went to Warminster about 1664 and died there in 1704, probably belonging to the Frome Selwood family. William Cabell, the descendant, was graduated from the Royal college of medicine and surgery in London, and after practising a number of years entered the British navy as a surgeon. He came to America about the year 1723, and settled in Virginia.

The first really authentic record of him is in 1726, when he was deputy sheriff in St. James Parish, Henrico county, an office of great importance at that time. Probably some time in 1726 he married Miss Elizabeth Burks, and in 1728 removed to a settlement on Licking Hole Creek, in what is now Goochland County, where he was elected a justice of the first county court, held from May 21 to June 1 1728. In November of the same year he was made a member of the first grand jury, and in December was qualified as a coroner, his knowledge of medicine and surgery fitting him for the office. From 1730 to 1734 he spent much time in locating lands for settlement in the region west of the mouth of the Rockfish river, being the first Englishman to make such an attempt.

In 1733, having located a large tract of land, he "entered for" it, but, before finally securing the legal right to the land, was obliged to go to England, leaving his wife and two friends as his attorneys. The survey was made in 1737, extending for twenty miles along both sides of the James river. In 1738 a patent for 4,800 acres of land was issued to him by Gov William Gooch, and in 1739 a grant of 440 acres was added. Dr. Cabell returned in 1741. In 1743 he was granted 1,200 acres adjoining his patent of 4,800 acres, and soon after his return from England he removed from Licking Hole Creek to the mouth of Swan Creek in Nelson County. After erecting dwelling houses, a mill, a warehouse and other buildings he named the place Warminster, and for more than half a century it was a thriving commercial centre.

In 1744 Albemarle County was formed, and he was one of the first justices; in August, 1746, he was commissioned coroner, and in September assistant surveyor of the county. In December, 1753, having increased his land by about 26,000 acres, he gave up his surveying business to his son William. He practised in his own county and those adjacent, and charged from one to five pounds, Virginia currency, for each visit. His services were usually engaged with the agreement that if the patient was not cured, the doctor would receive no pay beyond the immediate expense incurred. His wife Elizabeth died Sept. 21, 1756, and on Sept 30, 1762, he married Margaret, widow of Samuel Meredith. The bulk of his property he left to his son Nicholas, who was married April 16, 1772, to Hannah, daughter of Col. George Carrington.

William Cabell as a young man

Monument, Liberty Hall Cemetery (erected by grandson Joseph C. Cabell)

Liberty Hall Plantation, Nelson county, Virginia

1. ↑ Family Recorded, in Brown, Alexander. The Cabells and their kin: a memorial volume of history, biography, and genealogy. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1895)
   22, 35.

   ii. William \ b. March 9, 1699 [i. e., March 20th, 1700, present style]. He emigrated to Virginia.

2.   Mackenzie, George Norbury, and Nelson Osgood Rhoades. Colonial families of the United States of America: in which is given the history, genealogy and armorial bearings of colonial families who settled in the American colonies from the time of the settlement of Jamestown, 13th May, 1607, to the battle of Lexington, 19th April, 1775. (New York, Boston: The Grafton Press, 1907)
   8105.
3.   The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans ... By John Howard Brown.
4.   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)
   70.

   William Cabell, cousin of the Mayos. arrived in Henrico County by 1726. married Elizabeth Burks, and lived on Licking Hole Creek in the part of Henrico that became Goochland. Cabell apparently owned no land at that time, although his cousins, the Mayos. were extensive land owners. In 1741. Cabell left Goochland's "Licking-Hole Creek" and moved ten miles up the James to Swan Creek, a swan by coincidence or design being the Indian symbol for white man. Cabell eventually patented all of the low land on the James for twenty miles upstream from Swan Creek where he built his first house "Warminster." His first three children were bom in Goochland. Mary in 1727; William in 1730; and Joseph in 1732. When John, and Nicholas were born, that part of old Goochland lay in Albemarle. The Cabells were to create much of the history of the James River area in present Nelson during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Cabell apparenlty was less interested in Goochland once he and his wife developed the Swan Creek plantation.
   
   [Page 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.

5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2} Grave Recorded, in Find A Grave.

   [Includes photo of monument erected by grandson.]
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   [Inscription:
   Near this spot lie the early remains of Dr. William Cabell of Wiltshire, England, the founder of the family in Virginia which bears his name.
   Those of Elizabeth Cabell, his wife, and the mother of his children, who died Sept. 21, 1756 lie by his side. A Christian lady greatly beloved of her family and friends, and a pattern of domestic virtue, William Cabell emigrated from Warminster, England to the Colony of Virginia about 1723, or 1724.
   Born March 9, 1687
   Died Apr. 12, 1774
   In honor of their memory was this stone erected by the piety of their grandson, Joseph C. Cabell]
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   [Note of Caution: Grandson Joseph C Cabell died in 1856. His monument date (source unknown) does not match the Parish Register date¹ later discovered and reported by Brown in 1895.]