Dr. William Cabell

  Notes and Events:

• Note. William was educated as a surgeon in England and came to Virginia probably in 1723 (about the same time his cousins, William and Joseph Mayo, arrived from Barbados). Cabell was in St. James Parish of Henrico County when they appointed him an undersheriff to Capt. John Redford.

Probably about 1726 William married Elizabeth Burks. She was the daughter of Samuel Burks and his wife, Mary Davis. Elizabeth’s sister Mary Burks married Obadiah Smith (18 Feb. 1777) and was the mother of Peartree Smith who went to Kentucky, William Smith who married Elizabeth Mayo, Lucy Smith who wed James Powell Cocke after the death of his first wife, Elizabeth Archer, and Elizabeth Smith who wed Isaac Winston.

When the House of Burgesses created Goochland County from Henrico in 1728, Cabell’s property fell in the new county. His cousin William Mayo was among the first justices of Goochland and they added Cabell the following year. The county budget presented in the September Court, 1728 showed Cabell and Noel Burton counted 1,792,286 tobacco plants of a total of 5,549,811 plants in the county. Tobacco counters were vital officials of the colony. The county paid Cabell and Burton 1,542 pounds of tobacco for their services that year and they made Cabell the county coroner in the December Court, 1729. Cabell was evidently the first to settle on the James River beyond Rockfish River. He staked out land on both sides of the river for a distance for twenty miles and applied to his cousin and the county surveyor, William Mayo, to survey the land for him. Before he could lay legal claim to the land urgent business called him to England and he had to leave his affairs in the hands of his attorneys. William Mayo was Dr. Cabell’s first cousin. George Carrington and Joseph Scott were Mayo’s sons-in-law.

In Cabell’s absence, Mayo surveyed 6,720 acres of prime river land and, from 1735/6 until 1739, Governor Gooch issued Cabell five patents: 1,200 acres on 15 March 1735/6; 4,800 acres in 1738; 180 acres in 1739; 140 acres in 1739; and 400 acres in 1739. Cabell’s land began where the Rockfish River flows into the James River at the intersection of present-day Nelson, Albemarle, and Buckingham Counties. It ran along the river for twenty miles to present-day Riverville in Amherst County. The town of Warminster on this property in Nelson County was named for Cabell’s ancestral parish home.

Cabell was among the first justices of Albemarle County that met 24 January 1744/45 and his name appeared prominently among the records of that county and its successors, Amherst and Buckingham Counties. Cabell’s wife, Elizabeth died 21 September 1656. Per Williams notation: “of a coma and bilious fever, on Monday, about an hour by sun in the evening — and was interred by the side of my son George — according to her desire — and joining to her, I desire to be laid.”

On 30 September 1762, Dr. Cabell married Margaret (?) Meredith, the widow of Samuel Meredith Sr. She died without children on 26 February 1768. Dr. William Cabell died 12 April 1774 and they buried him at Warminster.

• Power of Attorney.

William married Elizabeth Burks.