(1750-1803)   In September 1780, the Amherst County Court recommended Nicholas Cabell for the rank of Colonel in the County’s militia. The original and an 1855 copy of the resolution may be found in the Cabell Family Papers in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia (MSS 5084). The […]

The “Sage of Monticello” left such an extraordinary mark on the state and nation that no biographical sketch, however lengthy, could catalog his myriad contributions or unravel his bewildering internal contradictions. This page, then, touches only on the many points of connection between Jefferson and the Cabells. The Jefferson and Cabell families were among the […]

Born on the Cabell-family outpost near Lexington, Kentucky, called “Cabell’s Dale,” John Cabell Breckinridge earned fame as a public servant of his hometown, state, region, and nation. He graduated from Centre College, a Presbyterian school, in Danville, Kentucky and went for a brief stint at the College of New Jersey before returning to Lexington to […]

James L. Cabell, born in 1813 to Dr. George Cabell, Jr. (1774-1827), followed his father into medicine and his uncle, Joseph C. Cabell, to the University of Virginia. At a young age, he was already pursuing both dreams with an unusual passion. Uncle William H. Cabell, former governor of the state, wrote of his nephew […]

The son of Nicholas Cabell, Jr. and Mary Carter Cabell, Nathaniel Francis Cabell was devoted to his family and to Swedenborgianism, a pietistic and ecumenical sect of Christianity named for founder Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). He graduated from Hampden Sydney in 1825 and from law school at Harvard University in 1827. At that time, he tentatively […]

The political genius of the Cabell family concentrated in the fourth generation of Cabells in America on William Cabell Rives, the great-grandson of patriarch William Cabell. Born to Robert and Margaret Cabell Rives at “Union Hill,” the Amherst County home of his grandfather, Col. William Cabell, on 4 May 1793, he briefly attended the College […]

Unlike his more well-known kinsmen, William Cabell Rives and John Cabell Breckinridge, who exercised their political gifts on a national stage, Joseph Carrington Cabell devoted his energies in service to his native state of Virginia. An early adherent to Jefferson’s party and well-traveled for his day–having completed a tour of Europe from November 1802-May 1806–Cabell […]

The firstborn of Col. and Mrs. Nicholas Cabell, William H. Cabell was the only member of the Cabell family to serve as Governor of the State of Virginia. Following a thorough education, including private tutors, four years at Hampden Sydney College (1785-1789), three years at the College of William and Mary (1790-1793), and a year […]

The youngest son of William and Elizabeth Cabell, Nicholas Cabell (b. 1750) did not let his youthful stature prevent him from participating energetically in the Revolutionary War effort. In emulation of his older brothers, he rushed home from William and Mary in May 1775 to help mobilize Virginia for war. That September, his brothers William […]

New evidence discovered by Randolph Wall Cabell proves that Col. John Cabell, the progenitor of an astonishing thirteen Cabell grandchildren, was born before his father William Cabell‘s departure for England in 1735. In a letter dated 19 January 1736 (1737 using today’s calendar), William Cabell exhorted his wife, Elizabeth Burks Cabell, “to keep my fore […]